In Another Life
by LittleInkling64
Summary: Before the personality cores were built, Aperture had a much more secretive project to control GLaDOS. But did they really create a solution, or just another monster? And what will happen when the results of the project come back to haunt the present? Takes place in the universe of Blue Sky and Generational Science. Sequel "The Steel Clock" in progress.
1. Prologue

AN: For anyone new to this story, I do have a regular upload schedule on Fridays. I post a chapter a week (provided nothing disastrous happens), and as of now (1/8), the story is more than halfway complete! With that, do read on and enjoy!

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Prologue

"Take a deep breath, Alex."

She did as she was told, breathing in deeply, exhaling in a rush of warm breath. The soft cotton of her dress was bunched between her fingers as she entered the chamber. A rush of chilled air—normal as far as the laboratories' indoor climate was concerned—blew across her forehead, disturbing some of the loose hairs dangling around her face. The rest were trapped in two clumsy but effective French braids. Restrictive, yes, but today was a day for taking care.

"—Her—"

"—prepare to fire up—"

"—get Alexandria hooked up—"

Alex breathed in again, letting the familiar hum of a thousand background systems flood her mind. It was familiar, comforting. Several scientists approached. She could hear their shuffling feet and their scattered, muttered worries.

"Hey, Alex?" She turned, instinctively, to her giant friend's voice and she reached out her hand. He met her hand with one of his own, bony and jittery but warm and friendly. She squeezed, and he began to ramble as he liked to do when he was nervous.

"You know, this might be a bit, just a bit scary—but that's why you haven't got to worry! Because I'll be right here, right here just, ah, next to you, er—on the floor yeah, I'll just sit there, alright? And I'll be right here for you, if, if maybe you need just a little bit of help or you know, anything at all really. I mean, I can't really well go get you a-a bagel or anything, but you know, it's the thought that counts."

She sat in the chair they provided, and something cold and clammy swiped across her temples, her forehead.

"Alcohol rub." One of the scientists muttered. She didn't mind. She was used to the sudden cold and wet; it came right before shots, and she had been given many of those.

Next came the little electrodes on her temples. They were cold too, but not quite as much, so she didn't mind. It was the sharpening of the buzz all around her that took some getting used to.

"Now," a sweet voice—too sweet—sounded not far from her ear and made her flinch, "just remember, Alexandria, She's just very sick. And you're here to help Her get better. If She gets cranky with you, it's just because She isn't feeling well, okay?"

Alex hated that woman's voice. The voice of the Child Test Subject Coordinator. It made her insides twist. Perhaps it was the falseness of her voice. Or perhaps it was the fact that her blunt mental voice poked holes so easily in her paper-thin lies spoken aloud. You'll get to go outside today, if you're good! _Yeah right, brat. _Perhaps we can arrange for some leisure time today._ The day you get leisure time is the day I get a paid vacation. _Of course I love you, Alexandria, I spend time with you, don't I?_ What would it take for second of gratitude from you?_

"I remember." Alex could hardly forget. It was all they had talked of for months. You're going to help somebody. You're going to help a lot of people. Don't forget. It's imperative you remember.

"Readying systems check." Someone called from across the room.

"You ready?" Her giant friend asked again, and she squeezed tighter on his hand. She shook her head, ever so slightly.

"Here we go again." A man's voice, cranky, sounded not far from her, followed by a slurp of coffee.

"Don't worry," her giant friend's bright voice filled her ear, and she relaxed just a fraction, "you trained for this for years! You'll do great!"

"I hope so, Mr. Wheatley." Her voice had shrunken somewhere along the line, and she couldn't muster any more volume. There wasn't any time left anyhow.

"Starting Her up. 3…2…1…"


	2. Chapter One

Chapter One

It was cold. Ohhhh…and wet, very wet.

_"Thank you for using this Aperture Science Vitreous Suspension Tank for your long-term relaxation needs. You have been in suspension for-er-errrrr-rrr—"_

Something hissed open, and Alex, gasping and coughing and hacking, fell to the floor. The tiles were so, _so_ cold, sending a shock of feeling through her numb, sticky body. The awful wet and cold was inside her, practically _was_ her. She kept coughing, her middle beginning to ache from the contraction of the muscles.

_"Due to your extended brain stimulation, you will need to contact a Aperture Scientist to be disconnected from the Aperture Deep Brain Stimulation system—"_

Alex was dimly aware of the voice above her and raised a shaky hand to the back of her head. Amidst nearly waist-length clumps of sticky wet hair she felt the smooth rubber casing of hundreds of tiny wires attached to her scalp. Panic crawled down her spine as the same unassuming voice continued mildly above her.

_"—in the event that an Aperture Scientist is unavailable, you will be-b-b-beee—back in suspension until an Aperture Scientist is available to assist your disconnection."_

"No!" The word slipped out, and Alex clapped a hand to her mouth, listening intently for some sign someone had heard her. She couldn't, couldn't, _couldn't_ go back into suspension. She needed to get out, to _escape_ this horrible place, now that she knew what they intended to—

The very thought made her gag, and she retched, though nothing came up. They had been planning to leave her in there, with _Her_, forever. And now a scientist would surely come running soon enough to put her back into suspension for who knew how long.

"Indefinite suspension" was what they'd said, or something along those lines. Or, rather, they'd thought it, and she'd caught that phrase from the mutterings in their minds.

_"If you have not yet been disconnected from the Aperture Science, there may not be an Aperture Scientist available at this time. Please step back inside the Aperture Vitreous Suspension Tank and await an Aperture Scientist's arrival. Please do not attempt to remove the Aperture Deep Brain Stimulation equipment. Any attempt to remove the Aperture Deep Brain Stimulation equipment may result in er-er-errrrrrrr—"_

"STOP!" Alex screamed, angry all at once at that horrible, calm voice. Something shattered in the direction of the voice, and little somethings fell to the floor in a rush of tinkling little shards.

She shrunk back. She'd forgotten she could do that, and the ability frightened her just as much as it had the first time. Memory swelled, but she shoved it back down.

Alex had to get out of here, and to do that, she'd have to disconnect from the hundreds of wires sprouting from her head. Threading her fingers tentatively through her scalp, she singled out a single wire and tugged, hard. It came out—oh yes, it came out—but the fire that followed its removal was the hottest and most painful she'd ever felt in her life.

"Oh," she gasped, at a loss for what else to say in the face of such a terrible achy burning. At last, after what seemed an eternity, the pain faded to a gentle sting. She fingered the remaining hundreds of little wires and felt tears well at the corners of her eyes. She _couldn't _do this. It was simply too much pain, too much to ask of her—a little girl. It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair—

Hope clawed its way up through the deluge of despair and slapped her round the face in its tough, sharp little way. It seemed to say, _C'mon now, keep your chin up! You're not so weak as all that! Get yourself up, dust off your knees, dry your tears, and get to work!_

Alex swallowed awkwardly around the lump in her throat and nodded in assent to that little voice. Her fingers curled around the wires. She _could_ do this.

_"—a-a-any at-ttempt to remove Aperture Deep Brain Stimulation Equipment may result in brain damage. For your own safety, please wait for an Aperture Scientist to remove the Aperture Deep Brain Stimulation Equipment."_

Alex's fingers stilled. _Brain damage?_ That didn't sound particularly appealing. She turned her face to the ceiling with no small measure of irritation.

"Well then how else am I supposed to get this off?" She asked of no one in particular. Come to think of it, where was everyone else? She hadn't heard a single voice except that of the automated man from the ceiling.

With a tentative thought, she reached out, searching for the other mental voices she was so used to. Silence. Odd. But she wasn't complaining. If they'd elected to hide her away in a dusty corner of the laboratories, all the better for her escape preparations.

"Well, I'm no scientist…" she began, waiting for some hidden voice to rebuke her comment. When none did, Alex tested the length of her wires and found that they were just long enough to allow her to walk to the side of the tank. Sure enough, her fingers found a myriad of buttons. She didn't know in the slightest which one would be what she needed, but luckily enough, she didn't need to know.

"…but I figure I can manage anyhow." She finished to herself, placing a hand against the casing of the tank's interface. Willing her consciousness underneath the surface of the electronics to the invisible, silent processes humming along below, Alex bent them to the curve of her thoughts. The circuits seemed to shrug—at least Alex was certain that if they had been human, they would have shrugged—and they slowly began filtering information to her from the tank's interface.

_[Test subject: Redacted, Alexandria]_

_ [Suspension begun 10-28-1998]_

_ [Suspension ended FILE CORRUPTED]_

_ [Aperture Deep Brain Stimulation© disconnect y/n]_

"It's," she paused to cough, mostly out of disbelief as her lungs had cleared of liquid some minutes ago, and continued, "it's just a button? A yes or no? You need a scientist to _say yes?_"

_[Aperture Deep Brain Stimulation© disconnect y/n]_

"Oh well yes. 'Y', that is. Disconnect, if you would, please."

_[y]_

_ [processing…]_

_ [Please standby. Beginning disconnect.]_

Fire blazed across her back of her head, so suddenly that she couldn't even find the breath to gasp. _Oh no no no please no this is so much worse wasn't there any sort of alternative please pleasepleasejuststopthispain—_

_[Disconnect 7% complete. Please standby.]_

Was this was death felt like?

_[Disconnect 18% complete.]_

_Was_ she dying? She knew, somehow, that she'd fallen to the floor—

_[Disconnect 23% complete.]_

If this was death, she was almost ready for it. Twenty-three percent and she was in the midst of a bubbling pool of magma, melting into nothing but pain and agony and—

_[Disconnect 41% complete.]_

Hope flagged, flickering in the depths of her mind, buried beneath the sheer nerve-destroying, unthinkable pain. It had spread to the rest of her body now, and everything was ablaze. She was barely halfway. She couldn't endure another halfway of this.

_[Disconnect 67% complete.]_

This was it, wasn't it?

_[Disconnect 84% complete.]_

Just a little longer, maybe if she could hold on—

_[Disconnect 96% complete.]_

_[Disconnect complete.]_

Alex gasped, as if breaking the surface of a body of water, and she gulped in ragged breaths of air. She lay there, on the floor, for a minute or two, letting the relief from the pain wash over her. When at last she could think again, her mind began somewhere along the lines of this: didn't care how long she lived or what she did or _any of that_; she was never, _ever_ going to feel pain like that again. _Ever_.

Alex rose gingerly, peeling her sticky wet skin off of the floor. It was about this time that she realized that she was naked, and a blush rose to her skin, hot and uncomfortable. Perhaps naked was extreme, as she was wearing a sort of elastic sports bra and shorts of a similar material, but she felt near enough to naked for discomfort. Not to mention, the chamber where she was in currently was chilly, just as she remembered most of the places in Aperture being, and the fact that she was dripping wet with goop from the tank didn't altogether help.

As she rose, her hair, long and stringy with moisture, fell limply around her face. A stray wire or two, now hanging loose, slithered along her back before falling away. She shivered at the touch. Alex let her fingers crawl through her scalp, now freed of the wires, and found a surprisingly small, _very_ tender patch of skin. How could such a tiny patch of nerves cause such—oh. Her fingers continued their journey and found a trail of achy skin that stretched from the back of her head, down her neck, and into a little spot just above the top of her spine.

They'd been connected directly to her nervous system. That would explain why every ending had felt like a set of fingers numb from cold thrust into a fire, except a thousand times worse. She fingered one of the cords, running her fingers along to the end, where—

"Ow!"

—something sharp pricked her finger. An itty-bitty needle on the end of the cord. Hundreds of those had just been plugged into her head and neck. She felt herself heave again, and she just knew she was going to throw up—

Alex shook the thoughts away, shaking her head so hard she could feel her brain rattle in her skull. This wasn't the time for dredging up every terrible thing. Dwelling on the pain and the wretchedness of it all would do her little good. She had things to do. For starters, she needed some proper clothes.

Then she would need a plan to escape.


	3. Chapter Two

Ah...so is this how an author's note is done? I suppose I'd better start before the story gets too far along. First off, I'm not sure how many people are really interested in this story yet, but to whom it may concern, the general idea is to post a chapter a week. Maybe two, if the creative muses take pity on me. Second, I am still a bit new to the fanfiction thing, so if you, the fabulous reader, could leave a review, that would be lovely!

Chapter Two

After some poking around, Alex had found the showers. Though there'd been no soap to speak of and the water had been a bit cold, she relished feeling of being clean. Of course, as she sniffed her arm and recoiled from the smell, she had to admit that there was a noticeable difference between being clean and _smelling_ clean.

Perhaps even calling herself _clean_ in any sense of the word was a bit of a stretch. The vitreous goop had the sort of smell that didn't easily cease to linger. If she'd had any experience with skunks outside of reading books, Alex might have compared the two. As it was, she never _had_ heard of a skunk outside of a book, so she hardly be expected to consider the animal in relation to the scent of her own wet self.

But she was happy, and that was all that mattered to her. It was a wet kind of happy, true, and Alex hadn't the slightest notion of how temporary her happiness would be, but it was happiness all the same. After a life lived under the constant direction of one faceless scientist or another telling her when to eat, sleep, or breathe, the sheer autonomy of bathing on her own was _glorious_. The feeling it gave her was so heady, it made her head spin, and she grinned.

She stepped from the shower, wet, and padded on wet bare feet to the lockers nearby. She felt for one that wasn't locked and began her search. Many of them were filled with dust that turned to a clotted wet mass on her fingers as she found unfamiliar-shaped knickknacks and odds-and-ends and—

"Ah ha." Her fingers brushed fabric, and though it was stiff and dusty, it was in one piece as far as she could tell, so she wasn't complaining; she'd run into other scraps of clothing so rotted that they disintegrated in her fingers. Unfolding the fabric slowly, Alex found herself holding something that felt an awful lot like a jumpsuit.

Had she been a test subject, the orange fabric might have been cause enough to make her shiver and shake with the weight of traumatic memory. Luckily for Alex, she'd never worn a jumpsuit, as even the smallest size was never meant for an eleven-year-old girl but rather for an adult. Instead, she'd worn a specially made dress that was familiar and soft after years of wear.

Not to mention, she was blind, so the color didn't much matter to her anyways.

In any case, Alex was content to pull on the jumpsuit, though it was decidedly far too large for her slight frame. However, rolling up the sleeves and pantlegs, she found that it was altogether quite manageable and well worth the tiny bit of warmth that the stiff fabric offered against the chill of the chamber. It did smell a little funny, but then again, she didn't smell particularly good herself, so she was in no position to judge the scent conditions of an old jumpsuit.

Now came the difficult bit. Alex made her way to the nearest door, using her hand on the wall to guide her. Perhaps she could find something long and thin to help her feel her way forward. Before, she'd made do with a pilfered ruler that she successfully hid from the scientists for all of two months before they'd taken it away.

Even now, years after, Alex felt like scowling. "Unnecessary equipment" they'd called it. A fancy term to remind her that she had no reason to go anywhere on her own. Ever.

But the frown melted and shifted to a smile. Taking the ruler away hadn't done anything but give her even more reason to keep trying to understand her surroundings. In fact, it had pushed her to try something she'd read about in a book—echolocation—which had led to talking to her friend about it, which had led to many happy hours of experimentation indeed.

A deep ache that felt suspiciously like loneliness threatened somewhere within Alex's chest, but she gripped the happy memories with white knuckles, willing the fleeting feeling of warm, buoyant joy to remain. She _would_ find him, and she would do whatever it took to get them both out of here, even if she had to rip apart every bit of laboratory in her path to do so.

_I can do it. I just know it_. Alex took a deep breath and opened the door. When nothing immediately yelled at her for being out of place, she reached forward a hand and felt…a mop.

She'd found a storage closet.

Alex nearly laughed aloud at the anticlimax. Her hands found a broom handle and she examined the material. Metal of some kind, likely aluminum since it was so light. An idea sparked. Maybe, if she unscrewed the head of the broom, she could—

The broom head stuck mid-rotation, likely stopped up with rust or dust or who knew what else. Alex sighed. If she were a muscular adventure hero like in her books or even just a stronger child, she might have muscled her way through the blocked threads or snapped the end off over her knee. As it was, neither of these options was really open to her. Of course, that didn't mean she was _entirely_ helpless.

Focusing her mind like a keen blade, Alex huffed and puffed, forcing it through the broom's flimsy aluminum like an invisible saw. After a minute or two, the head dropped to the floor with clatter that made her wince, but her handiwork was sound enough to make Alex smile in satisfaction. Had she been able to see the now-free broomstick, she might have been surprised to see the smoothness of the cut, but as it was, she could feel it with her fingers.

"Heh," she chuckled to herself, "all I need now is some action music."

After a bit of fumbling, she found the correct door, took another enormous breath, and exited the chamber without the slightest idea what might come next.

Alex was fairly sure that it had to be Christmas. Or maybe Thanksgiving? Did people get off for that? Or Easter? She hadn't the foggiest how vacation days worked for Aperture employees.

All she knew was that the offices were awfully quiet. Even if it _was_ the night shift, she was well aware that the laboratories were never truly ever asleep. Someone was always burning the midnight oil somewhere, either making sure a dubious excuse for a nuclear core wasn't primed to explode or just up working late on a project.

The office corridors had a familiar plastic-y tiled feel to them underneath her feet—far more hospitable to her bare toes than the metal catwalks had been. As she walked, she found herself in a relatively good mood; after all, the offices were empty for whatever reason, leaving her the opportunity to really search for…for…

Coldness swept across her forehead where it wasn't covered by a thick fringe of hair, and a chill shivered down her spine.

_—She's awake and oh dear God—_

_ —I can't, I c-can't breathe…_

_ …please…please…don't leave me here…_

_ …I don't want to die here! I had so much—!_

Like the summer sun ducking beneath a bank of clouds, the warmth and hope she had felt only moments before vanished in a puddle of dread. True, she didn't have enough experience with the feeling of being out under the sun to truly know the depth of the metaphor, but that was beside the point.

The point was that of all the many things that had been added onto her rather patchy set of genes, telepathy was the thing she most hated and least understood. She hated how people's thoughts bumped into hers like careless bees tumbling every which way, sometimes stinging on contact and sometimes simply brushing by. Absentminded recollections of grocery lists breezed right through her thoughts right next to some of the most cutting words she'd ever heard directed towards another human being.

But echoes were an entirely different animal. Only the most pungent and deep-rooted emotions were strong enough to leave traces, and in Alex's experience, they tended to be mostly negative. After all, of all the few people she'd met in Aperture, none of them seemed like the sort to experience a happiness strong enough to leave crumbs of it behind. The only other time she'd experienced an echo—the first time—was something…she'd rather not think about.

The room smelled like life gone stale. Rudely brushing aside the ghosts of old thoughts drifting around in the air, she tapped her makeshift cane around the room. It was far too heavy to be as sensitive as her good old ruler, but it did prevent her from knocking into what felt like a large desk or filing cabinet, so it did have its merits. Plus, it made her feel like a wise and powerful wizard, so there was that.

Alex hummed to herself, a nonsense ditty, fighting off the creeping cold of residual fear. From the heaviness in her chest and the way her head buzzed, it didn't seem to be working. Screwing her face up in a furious rendition of an expression that might have been considered either determination or a reaction to a foul smell, she shoved the echoes away and opened her mouth.

"_This is a song that never ends, never ends, never ends,_" she sang forcefully, willing some small spark of warmth back into her chest, "_this is a song that never ends, never ends._"

She found a chair, slid into it, and coughed at the dust she disturbed by sitting down. Scooting forward awkwardly, she approached the desk and reached out her hands. Fingers explored a heap of papers that slid over each other and drifted to the floor unnoticed. Her hands found a coffee mug—knocked it over, actually—but it was empty. She reached farther and found a computer monitor.

"Bingo! I mean, I've never actually played, but given it's a common English colloquialism, I think we can let it slide this time."

The computer was old and cranky, at least to Alex's mind, and so it wasn't particularly happy about being woken up after being switched off for a bit. All the same, it booted up successfully and responded well enough to her instructions.

_[User:null online]_

"Alright, so I'm in, I guess." Alex pretended to crack her knuckles, "time for some answers."


	4. Chapter Three

AN: Hello all. The creative muses did indeed take pity on me, so here's chapter three! Please enjoy and leave a review if you did! And even if you didn't, feedback would still be appreciated since I am always trying to improve my writing. With that out of the way, read on!

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Chapter Three

_[Alert]_

_ [System wide search initiated]_

_ [Search term: Wheatley, Stephen]_

_"Now what could that be?"_ GLaDOS's tone was mild, soft and curious.

The panels in her chamber rippled smoothly, like rings of disturbance that follow a rock tossed into a pond. Crimson light bled from the brief glimpses between the panels, like a brewing, hellish beyond. Thousands of processes and calculations hummed behind every movement, simultaneously juggling critical functions of the facility and more amusing pursuits, like solving Gaussian Integer problems or debating the finer points of lying and deception with Caroline.

_[Employee file accessed: Wheatley, Stephen]_

Had She been a younger AI by only a few years, She might have felt some insistent, urgent need to develop the ability to vomit at the mention of the moron. Perhaps She might have even felt an urge to add to her ever-creative list of ways to make him suffer.

However, She was a bigger person than that, and She had long abandoned the list. It still existed, of course—She still felt the need to be prepared should the occasion present itself—but it had fallen along with Her residual hatred into an icy sort of indifference. The moron—and the lunatic—were simply not worth the effort, especially when She looked back on the amount of runtime she'd devoted purely to insulting the pair of them. They were good insults, to be sure—She didn't regret that aspect of them—but the time _wasted_ when She still had a test subject that She could run day and night nearly raised the urge to indulge her rage.

Abbigail was a poor substitute for Chell. The honesty of the thought horrified Her, but She couldn't muster the sarcasm necessary to negate it. The problem, for the most part, was connected to the fact that She had become so attatched to Abbigail. After multiple self-analyses, She'd been forced to conclude that Her treatment of Abbigail was considerably…_maternal_, even in the lightest sense of the word. The very notion disgusted Her, but She knew that if She made any attempt to treat Abbigail with a lesser degree of civility, Caroline would pop along like a rubber tip to blunt the tip of a perfectly good sharp foil. To put it in more primitive human terms, she was a killjoy.

At the best of times, Caroline was a difficult personality for Her to interact with. At the worst of times, she was an inane voice inside Her head, a voice that sounded far too much like Hers for comfort, and that voice told Her to do the most idiotic of things. _Let Abigail sleep for eight hours between testing days. Feed Abigail nutrient bars, and don't just jab an IV in her arm while she's asleep. Read Abbigail a bedtime story—and __**not**__ one just about the functions of the turret production line again._

_"Speak of the devil."_ She threw the phrase out, purposely baiting Caroline. There was no reply.

It'd been odd. Not unwelcome, by any means, but abnormal. Caroline had been almost completely absent from Her thoughts and hadn't piped up with her annoying voice for several days now. However, since she sometimes tended to have a propensity towards more human expressions of emotion, she was prone to hiding away in the murky base of Her mainframe in a stew of irritation or anger as the case might be.

But even these expressions of extreme emotion had been unusual for Caroline, who was by nature a gentle soul and hardly an impressive force within Her systems. Caroline was usually reduced to begging, pleading, and prodding most of the time when it came to convincing Her to do anything She found incredibly boring—which happened to comprise most of Caroline's suggestions.

All that had changed within the last few weeks, as she'd become moodier, with a tendency to pick one emotion out of a random spectrum and run with it to the most radical ends. In a fit of impassioned anger, she'd threatened to cut off Abbigail's toes one by one for every second she went over the fastest record for any given test she was doing. GLaDOS had been impressed by the creativity of the threat—a realm in which She had extensive expertise—until Caroline had seized control of the mainframe for 3.4 seconds and attempted to _carry it out_. Immediately following, she had plunged into flood of tearful regret and despair and pouted somewhere deep in Her system—an area that was the computer equivalent of a human subconscious.

And then she had stayed there for the last four days. Not that She was counting.

_[Core Project file 7A: Intelligence-Dampening Core acces—_

_ "Stop that."_ Almost all thoughts of Caroline vanished, as She pounced on the electronic signature. Blocking the user's access, She traced the signal to an older, long-dormant wing of the building and the surrounding offices. The computer was old and cranky in the extreme, but a mere mention of the words "android hell" were enough to motivate it into allowing Her access to its camera.

The quality of the video was poor and fuzzy, with a tendency to freeze up every few frames. All the same, She was able to make out a small, frantic figure.

"No!" the figure gasped, her clearly feminine voice short and high like the whistle of a tea kettle. Her fingers scrabbled anxiously along the computer's housing, as if that would somehow re-allow her access. A thick chunk of long white hair fell across her face and slowly tangled in the ever-increasingly frantic movements of her hands.

And then her fingers brushed across the camera. And she stood still, staring, for a long minute. GLaDOS could see then that her eyes were unusually pale in color, and they didn't seem to focus on the camera itself but rather stared in its general vicinity. The signature orange color of an Aperture Science testing jumpsuit glared out from the screen, and it hung around her body in baggy, indistinct folds.

The small girl's right hand shot up and hovered, anxiously, over the camera, partially obscuring the view.

"It's…" The word hissed and fuzzed from the poor audio quality, but there was no mistaking the horror of her tone. "It's…_you_. They turned you back _on_?"

There was a crash, as something indistinct fell to the floor, and the girl disappeared from the screen in a flurry of movement. After a second or two of harried-sounding movements, there was silence. The girl—whoever she was—had moved on from the office. To where, She wasn't sure at the moment; those office areas tended to fall within a fuzzy grey area of her control that was neither complete nor totally absent. But She knew where those offices were, and She could send someone to find out.

GLaDOS cut the video and sent for them.

_"I realize you two only have a few hundred _successful _testing hours together, but despite your lack of experience you do seem to be mildly competent in unusual testing circumstances."_ She commented dryly as Blue and Orange slotted from their respective tubes and landed on the floor of Her chamber. They chirped to each other for a brief second or two before remembering why they were there and snapping to attention. They eyed her mutely, almost as if holding their breath, waiting for Her to speak.

_"You are going to retrieve something for me. I've given you the parameters for a search area, but your target is likely to be in an…unpredictable location._" She paused, maneuvering her chassis so that her faceplate hung close to the floor, mere inches from the two robots.

_"Don't disappoint me. I'd give you a reason why not to, but since an advanced memory function is something you don't have, it would just be a waste of my time _and_ an insult to your non-existent advanced memory function. I suggest you get going."_

Blue gave a wildly eager salute, slipping back up into the tube with an electronic squeal. Orange rolled a single tired optic and followed shortly after.

_"For once, Orange, I have to agree with you. Your cooperative testing partner is quite frankly ridiculous. Five science points awarded to Orange."_


	5. Chapter Four

AN: Hello all. This is a shorter chapter than usual, but I wanted to check in with some of the original Portal characters for a bit. Also please feel free to check out the DeviantArt page I have set up for this story if you're interested. I'm under the same username that I am here. With that said, read on!

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Chapter Four

Sophie was doing her homework at the table when the phone rang. Her mom paused at the kitchen counter, dusting off her floury fingers in a quick motion, and picked up the phone. Tucking it under her chin as she went back to her dough, she nodded at Sophie, gesturing to her homework.

Sophie put her head back down and sighed, forcing her antsy fingers back to work. She hated math homework, but the fact that it was too late at night to ask Abbigail for help made it even worse. Sophie knew she needed good grades if she was ever going to get into medical school—that is, if the financial side of that dream ever managed to come true—but did she really need that good a grasp of logarithms?

"…well, she's doing homework, but I think she can talk for a couple of minutes. Just keep it short if you can, Ellie, thanks."

Chell handed to the phone to Sophie with a silent five-fingered hand raised and pointed look.

"Okay," Sophie whispered and took the phone eagerly. Anything but logarithms.

"Sophie?" Ellie's voice sounded far away, then the phone clicked and her voice seemed to come closer. "Are you there?"

"Yeah, I'm here. Just suffering away with math."

"Oh, I feel that. How's everything else going?"

"Oh, yeah, it's going great, I guess." Sophie paused to write down a few numbers, then set her pencil down.

"You still worried about money stuff?"

Sophie hesitated for only a second before she answered. "Yeah, but mom thinks if I really hammer away at getting scholarships, I might have a chance."

"That's good." Ellie sounded distracted. "Hey…Sophie?"

"Yeah?"

"Uh…so if—hypothetically speaking—well, er…do you remember how right before the whole, uh, _incident_, I told you I had a weird dream?"

"Yeah…why?" Sophie sensed something coming, and she didn't like the feeling building in the pit of her stomach. "Did you have another dream?"

"Well…" The word faded into a sigh that hissed gently over the phone. "I don't want to worry you, but…yes. I did have another dream, and this one is way bizarre and I didn't even think it could be related except that it had _her_ voice."

Sophie's blood ran cold. She didn't have her mom's or even her dad's experience with the murderous AI that lived only miles from their quiet little town, but Sophie _had_ tangled with _her_ before. She knew the danger _she_ posed, particularly since her mother had begun to relate her own tale of survival in slow fits and starts.

Sophie knew it pained her mother to talk about those memories. Chell would get a funny little crease between her brows and she would clutch Wheatley's fingers tight, but she _would_ tell Sophie. The story had come in bits and pieces, no more than fifteen minutes at a time, oftentimes less. Murals. Swirling holes in space and time. Fatty jokes. Determination every step of the way, sometimes tempered with desperation or triumph. Sophie anticipated a bit about the moon any day now. She figured, since her parents would so often look up at the full moon and go silent, both of them, as they stared up at its surface. It had to be a part of the puzzle.

"…uh, hello? Sophie?"

Sophie shook herself out of her thoughts, noticing that her mother was now looking at her with _very_ familiar squinty-eyed sort of look. Uh oh.

"Yeah, yeah I'm here."

"Look, I really don't want to bother you, but it's just, last time this happened, everything I dreamed…well, it sort-of came true."

"Ok, well then just tell me."

"Just…" Ellie paused, "just don't laugh, okay? It really is weird."

Chell gave Sophie a warning look and held up two fingers. Two minutes.

"Of course I won't laugh, but hurry up because my mom is giving me the scary look 'cause I've got two minutes left on the phone."

"Oh, ok." Ellie inhaled deeply. "I saw…white hair. Belonging to somebody, obviously, but I couldn't see who, just a cloud of hair that looked like…like it was floating. And then well, _her_ voice was there too." Ellie shivered. "But it wasn't coming from the person with white hair. It was coming from a metal ball with…a glowing yellow eye."

"A-a metal ball?" Sophie frowned. She glanced at her mom to see a warning face. "Right, I'm not sure what that could mean, but I've gotta go, sorry. Mom's giving me that look, and I do have to finish my homework, so…"

"Ok." Ellie sighed, the sound hissing over the phone. "Just…just promise me you'll be careful, ok? Because _her_ voice was really—well, it was…" she shuddered, "…well, even after all this time. I wouldn't want anything to happen."

"Don't worry Ellie. We're pretty prepared. I'm sure if anything happens," Sophie chose her words carefully, eyeing her mother at the counter, "we can handle it." Sophie squeezed the last word in as her mother took the phone from her hands with a wry smile.

"Wait!" Ellie's shout faded from the phone, and Sophie's mother gave her an exasperated look before handing the phone back. One finger. One more minute.

"What is it, Ellie?"

"What she said! Sorry, I remembered what she said."

"What was it?" Sophie asked warily.

"She said, 'She's a monster.'"

"Who?"

"I don't know. But be careful."

Ellie hung up, and Sophie felt the horrible feeling of dread pool in her stomach.


	6. Chapter Five

AN: So I know I normally upload on a Friday, but this is how it happened this week. In any case, chapter six is in the works, and scene artwork is on its way for the prologue and chapter one, so I'm keeping busy! Please feel free to follow if you like the story, and I would love if if you, the lovely reader, would review if you enjoyed the story or even if you didn't! It's always nice to get feedback! With that, read on!

* * *

Chapter Five

Alex tore out of the offices like a pack of wolves were behind her. It didn't matter where she went—the one consuming thought that burned in her brain was just to _get away_. Her broom handle slipped from her fingers, and she paused for a few precious seconds that she couldn't spare to snatch it back up with scrabbling, shaking fingers.

_She'd_ found her. The thought frightened her beyond words yet at the same time filled Alex with a burning, furious _anger_. Her thoughts snapped at each other in an incessant loop, warring between a desire to timidly bow and a burning need to kick _her_ in the teeth. Multiple times.

But hope flared deep in her chest. If she could just get up to the offices, somehow, someway, and find her friend—solve this puzzle—

A series of electronic chirps interrupted her, and Alex screeched on instinct. Scrambling back, she reached out with bold thoughts, even as her arms trembled, wrapped around the aluminum broom handle. Her thoughts landed on a series of cameras nestled into alcoves above her, a series of electronic keypads and locking mechanisms and…two of something new.

Alex frowned. What were these things…these robots? They felt robotic, with a series of movements flashing through the circuits, along with a few processes that approached the feeling of a human thought or two.

They chirped again, coming closer, and Alex gripped her broom handle like a weapon.

"You should know I'm not afraid to use this!"

There was a short electronic gurgle, two long chirps, then silence. Then hard, clanking, metal footsteps coming closer and closer.

"Get away! Get aw—WAH!" Alex yelled as she abruptly dropped from what she'd assumed was a solid surface and landed slumped up against a wall. How? What?

There was a sound—a curious, strange, _other-worldly_ sound—and it splashed into her sense of hearing before she fell again, this time bruising her stomach as the broom pole poked her in the tummy upon landing.

"Ouch! What kind of a greeting was that? You know you could have just said hello! But _oh_ _no_, bodily harm is the way to go I guess."

She heard the sound again, the same sound from before, but this time she was ready. Sure enough, the floor dropped from her feet once again, but this time, she braced herself, letting her own thoughts buoy her up—floating—from the floor.

The chirps became urgent now, frantic and high-pitched as the two robots bickered back and forth. She couldn't quite concentrate properly enough to catch their conversation _exactly_, but she caught the gist of it.

They needed to get her to _her_ chamber. They couldn't because she was floating. Thus, they needed to knock her out-

"H-hey!" Alex protested as they approached with metal footsteps. "There's no need to grab me! I don't really want to be knocked out if you please!"

The robots paused. Her understanding confused them. Not for long.

Cold metal digits curled and hardened around her skinny arms, and Alex screamed.

The robots released their grip as a series of cameras shattered along the corridor. Glass tinkled and Alex ran, oblivious to the shards of glass embedding themselves in her feet and the twisted remains of her broom pole at the edges of the corridor and the robots wriggling on the floor. Her reaching hands met the barrier of an office door, and she thrust forward with her thoughts, tearing the door apart as if it provided no more resistance than tissue-paper.

Beyond, her feet barely registered the metal of a catwalk before she tripped on the no-longer-rolled-up pantleg of her jumpsuit and she was falling—

Tumbling through space, Alex registered at least ten thousand thoughts, but only two of them were pertinent at the moment.

One, her odds of survival were decreasing with every passing second that she fell at who knew what speed.

Two, since she liked the idea of living, she should really get on with doing something about it.

Ignoring the wind rushing past her face, Alex gathered her thoughts, weaving herself an invisible net that she imagined pressing into her face as she fell into it—

The wind was knocked from her lungs as impossibly smooth cords pressed into her face, squishing her nose flat. Just as she'd imagined.

"Ah-ha," she mumbled around the cords, pleased despite the situation.

"Who are you?" A female voice, light and young, called out somewhere to her left. Alex turned towards the voice. "And what are you doing?"

"Well," Alex grunted, shifting in her invisible net, "I'll be honest—I'm not entirely sure."

"Are you sitting in an excursion funnel? Why are you floating?"

Alex scrambled for a coherent thought. "Yes."

"Yes what?"

"Yes, I'm sitting in the—that thingy. It's making me float, but I didn't know what it was called."

Not a total lie, perhaps. She _was_ sitting in something, and she didn't know what it was because there wasn't an official name for it as far as she knew, so…

"What's your name?"

"Alexandria, but you can call me Alex. That's what my friends called—call—me."

"So, Alexandria."

"No, Alex." Alex shifted a little in her web, trying to face the direction of the voice. "We can be friends, which means you can call me Alex."

"I think Alexandria's fine for now. So, _Alexandria_, what are you doing up there?"

"Well, er, I may have sort of kinda fallen from an upper level while I was er, touring the facility."

"Touring."

Alex could tell from the tone of the voice that the girl was unimpressed. Wracking her brain, Alex struggled to sell the lie.

"Yeah! Um, so I'm just trying to get back to the lobby, if you'd be so kind to give me directions."

"You're wearing a test subject jumpsuit."

"Oh, yeah, well I thought it was a weird souvenir too, but it _was_ free so—"

"You're lying. You're not with a tour group."

"What? I am shocked, honestly, it's—it's no yeah, you caught me." She slumped with confession. "But I swear—I just want to feel the sunshine for two minutes, if that's not too terribly much to ask!"

"Sunshine?"

"Yeah! You know, like a big ball of fire up in space, sends down lots of nice warm beams—never actually felt it, just read about it."

"Wait you've never—"

They were interrupted by the clanking of metal feet on the catwalk, and Alex shivered, shrinking from the sound. Familiar chirps and a one-sided conversation followed.

"What are you doing here?"

Chirping.

"Her? Wait, you need to get _her_?"

Enthusiastic chirp.

"Great, I guess we'll just go up to Her chamber together then."

A chill ran down Alex's spine. There was only one _Her_ this girl could be referencing. And if she was going there voluntarily…maybe she wasn't a friend after all.

"Here, I'll help you get her down from there."

"NO!" Alex burst out, and before she could think anything through, her concentration broke, her mental ropes dissolved like so much sugar candy, and she fell.


	7. Chapter Six

AN: Hello all. Since the holidays are coming up very soon, take an extra long chapter posted extra early! Please enjoy and leave a review if you did, or even if you didn't! Also feel free to check out the new scene art I have posted for the prologue chapter on the DeviantArt page for this story. With that, read on!

Edit: So I got the dates wrong for some of the stasis pods. The corrected dates should be down below. Also some grammatical/spelling errors have been corrected.

* * *

Chapter Six

_Alex had been crying when her giant friend poked his head in. At the sound of his long-legged, flopping sort of footsteps, she sucked her tears in so quickly that any bystander might have questioned the existence of the tears in the first place._

_ Alex, however, was simply well practiced. Still, her giant friend could see through her immediately._

_ "Aw no don't cry! Are you crying? Well, here—hang on—there, I've got a hanky." He handed her a cloth, and soft fabric rubbed between her fingers as she blew her nose._

_ "In fact, I've got something better than a hanky! I got you—just guess what I got?"_

_ "What?"_

_ "A book!"_

_ "Thank you! But Mr. Wheatley—"_

_ "Now stop, stop, I already know what you're gonna say but hear me out, ok—I bet you're saying to yourself, 'hey Wheatley, buddy, that's a lovely book and all, but what makes it all so special, mmm?'"_

_ "Well—"_

_ "Hang on, hang on! So there's this bloke over where I'm from, wrote a lot of books for kids, you know, and he wrote this one," he put the book in Alex's hands, "about a giant who's friends with a little kid—and well, well I thought it sort of sounded a lot like you and me so I—ah."_

_ Alex jumped up and hugged her friend, squeezing tight. There were not words enough in the universe, even in all of the dictionaries of the world, to describe the happy feeling welling up inside her at that moment._

_ "Oh! I'm not even finished. See, I made sure I got a copy that has all of the little bumpy things, so you can read it all on your own. See, got some nice big bumps on the front for the title, rather short thing, not even a word really, just an acronym."_

_ Alex pulled away and felt the front of the cover, reading instinctually by touch._

_ "B…F…G. What's that stand for?"_

_ "I dunno, guess you'll have to figure out—course that won't take _you_ long, being the genius you are."_

_ "Thank you, Mr. Wheatley."_

_ "You're welcome, Alex."_

* * *

Alex awoke to a dull ache in every inch of her body and a sharp burn in her feet that prickled across her heels and soles.

"Oh! I thought you might not wake up at all!" A voice, friendly enough, came from somewhere above her, with a subtle sort of echo that something in her just _knew_ was electronic. At the sound, something in her tensed, a little part of her that had been bitten hard enough to know fear.

_No machine is your friend down here._

"You were falling pretty quick, but I managed to switch on an excursion tunnel and catch you…" the voice rambled on, but Alex was focused more on trying to figure out what to do next.

Her fingers worked around something fleshy and rubbery on the ground, and she twisted ruthlessly as her mind picked at the puzzle that was her current situation. If she was to find her friend, she would have to figure out some way to bypass the system and avoid drawing _Her_ attention again while she searched for her friend.

The computer had said something about a "core" project before her access had been blocked. Maybe she could find the offices where the project took place? Alex shook her head in annoyance. She knew well enough that the laboratories were a veritable labyrinth, since she'd tried to escape and had failed for that very reason…twice.

"…no, you don't want to tell me your name?"

"What?" Alex turned her head up in the direction of the voice and quirked an eyebrow.

"You weren't listening this whole time, were you?" The voice sounded almost disappointed, with a little indignance thrown in.

"I'm sorry," the words slipped out before Alex could stop them. _Stupid ingrained manners_. Still, she couldn't _not_ be polite now, so she plowed on ahead. "I beg your pardon, but I was just thinking. Could you repeat what you said?"

"Oh, I…well." The voice sounded as if it had been ready to do battle and had just had a hole punched through its sails. "Well, ok then. What I said was, 'my name's Virgil, what's yours?', but then you didn't answer."

"Oh well then, my name's Alex-andria. Alexandria."

"Ah. Nice to meet you, Al, mind if I call you Al?"

"I, er, I suppose not. Hey, so you're a robot."

"Core, actually, but I suppose, _yes_, you could consider me a robot sort of—"

"Did you say core?"

"Yes, actually I—"

"Terribly sorry to cut you off," Alex tried to rise to her feet but abruptly fell back when pain shot through her feet, "but—ah!"

"You alright?"

"Yeah, yeah," Alex sucked in a breath, shoving down the pain. "But I need your help. I need to find my friend, and all I've got to go on is something about a 'core project'."

"Do you know which one?"

"Which one?"

"Er, Intelligence-Dampening was what it said."

"Oh, Wheatley! Yeah—"

"That's him! Mr. Wheatley! Do you know where he is? Was the core project something he was transferred to? Was he an engineer or something?"

"Whoa, whoa," Virgil's voice took on a distinctly disdainful tone, "even the _geniuses_ at Aperture would never put someone like that on such an important project."

"Hey!" Alex felt the anger, familiar and quick, flare up inside. "He's a lot cleverer than that! He is _not_ a moron."

"I-I never said that." Virgil sounded slightly alarmed. "And besides, he wouldn't have been put on the project even if he was a genius. He _was_ the project."

"Was the—" The words crashed into Alex's brain, derailing her train of thought and smashing it to pieces. "W-what does that mean?"

"Well he's—he's a core."

"…you mean a core was named after him."

"No." Virgil's voice sounded tired now. "No, I mean he's a core, get it? What did you think he was?"

"A person." The answer rasped from her throat, worming around a lump already forming. She swallowed the lump back, but her throat only ached.

"Oh…" Virgil was silent for a moment.

Alex's chest felt cold, and there was something heavy sitting there, dragging everything in her to the floor. Perhaps so she could lie there and rot for a few centuries, letting the heavy feeling leak out onto the floor.

"You know…if that means what I think it means, then there might be a chance that, well, he's still…"

"Still alive?"

"Oh of course he's alive. I mean, he's a core, so he'll be around longer than you will—"

Alex sucked in a terrified breath. She couldn't imagine being old and wrinkly and dead while her friend lived on forever. But he _was alive_. There was still hope.

Virgil seemed to notice this and quickly assured her, "—oh don't think about that, just ah…oh I'm terrible at this…"

Alex put a steadying hand on her chest, forcing herself to take long, calming breaths.

"Virgil, please, how did he become a robot, er, a core?"

"Well, I don't know exactly, but I've done quite a bit of poking around down here, and I found something that might help us figure it out."

"Can you take me there?"

* * *

Alex winced with every movement of her foot. She'd given up trying to walk ages ago and was trying very hard to concentrate on both following the sound of Virgil's voice _and_ keeping herself several inches off the ground. Floating was not something she was particularly used to, and the sensation made her feel quite helpless, even though she was well aware that it was her own mind lifting her up.

At least they were here at last. The air took on a decidedly poor quality, foul and pungent. It was as if, well, it was so terrible and Alex had so few scents to compare it to that she couldn't come up with an adequate metaphor for the sensation. In any case, she _could_ say that it was a rather _familiar_ smell, since she herself smelled vaguely like the chamber they'd just entered.

"Right, so here we are. Deep storage. Not sure how they managed to get humans into computers, but when they were done, they still had their, er, bodies left over. And then they stuck them here."

For all of the strangeness filling her mind, Alex felt that she was taking everything rather well.

"Suspension tanks."

"Yeah…I'm guessing you're familiar with them?"

"Well, considering I fell out of one not so long ago, I'd say I'm pretty familiar with them."

"Oh, ah. Probably a bit disoriented I'd imagine, maybe even brain damage…"

"What was that?"

"Oh! Nothing." Virgil hastily changed the subject, but Alex let it go. "Now hang on, he ought to be right around the corner here…"

Alex slowly floated back down to the floor, wincing and cringing at the sharp hot pain that came. Something warm and wet squished between her foot and the floor, and she scrunched her nose up in disgust. She shoved the thoughts aside for the moment and stretched her mind out towards the sleeping computer systems.

Their processors felt groggy and sleepy, but impressions of data and names dreamily presented themselves to her as she passed by rows and rows of tanks.

_[Subject: Sander, Davis]_

_ [Subject: Smith, Jorge]_

_ [Subject: Tieger, Caroline]_

The last one sounded…familiar. Alex took a second to pinpoint the memory, sliding it from a metaphorical filing cabinet in her head to examine closely. It was fuzzy, but she remembered something…something about a tired woman who had come to visit her. Something about a woman who loved science. Someone—

"Hey!"

Alex perked up and moved towards the sound of Virgil's confused commentary.

"I can't imagine…what on…why would he…how?"

Alex couldn't hope to know what he was seeing, so she reached out her thoughts to the tank he was in front of.

_[Subject: Wheatley, Stephen]_

_[Status UNOCCUPIED]_

"What does it mean, unoccupied?"

"It means it's empty. He's not here." Virgil sounded as confused as Alex felt.

Not there? Where would he be then? Alex tapped into the interface, absorbing as much of the information as she could.

_[Stasis initiated FILE CORRUPTED]_

_ [Stasis ended 6-8-2098]_

"W-what?" Alex couldn't breathe, couldn't process, couldn't understand.

"What was what?"

"Two _thousand _and ninty-eight? Is that the year?"

"Oh, I don't know about that. Human records are pretty weird."

Alex fell to her knees for at least the second time that day. Shivers crawled up and down her spine as she digested this latest bit of information. She did some quick math.

_A hundred years _since she'd first gone to sleep, at the very least. She couldn't exactly assume that her friend had come out of stasis just minutes ago. Either way, it put her in a difficult position.

Everyone she'd ever known was probably dead, and her only friend was missing. _Oh, Mr. Davis, did you ever get onto Jeopardy like you wanted? Ms. Margret, did you ever write that book? Ms. Caroline, did you ever get to do the science you loved? Mr. Wheatley, my _friend_, where are you?_

Every thought rammed in one after another, barely giving the one that came before time to breathe before they squished together in a tangled mess in her mind. Alex shook her head, hard, desperately hoping that maybe the physical action would settle her thoughts, help her find the bright spot to this.

Maybe there wasn't one. Maybe for once in her life, there wasn't a happiness to be found or made in this situation.

But Alex simply couldn't give up. Not yet.

"Do you think he could have gone up to the surface?"

"I…I don't know." Virgil replied quietly.

"Well," Alex went on slowly, "I think that's where I ought to go next."

"Now, I _can_ help with that."


	8. Chapter Seven

AN: Hello all. Goodness! This was a long chapter to write, but I simply couldn't bring myself to break it up. Hope you enjoy it, and please feel free to leave a review/comment if you liked it or even if you didn't! Also, new chapter art is up on the DeviantArt page for this story. With that, read on!

* * *

Chapter Seven

"Alright then! So here's the elevator." Virgil's voice, warm and curiously accented, had become another bright spot in the darkness and cold of the labs that Alex was happy to follow. His masculine voice didn't ramble nearly as much as her giant friend did, but something about the unique quality of his accent was so utterly familiar that she couldn't help but relax.

Before them, something large slid down with a gentle metal rasp and hissed open. Alex stepped forward, but Virgil cut in, "Wait."

"What is it?"

"I…I need to ask a favor."

"Well, sure." Alex shrugged. "You've done so much for me, I'd be glad to help you back. It's the least I can do."

"There's this—this lady, Mel. I, well, I helped her get to the surface too. If you could, well, I dunno…just look her up for me."

"Check on her?"

"Yeah, something like that."

Alex lifted up from the floor, hovering up to Virgil's level on his metal rail. Reaching out a hand, she found one of his handles and curled her fingers tight around it.

"I promise you, I'll do my best to find her. And I'll tell her you sent me."

"Thanks."

"Goodbye, Virgil."

"Goodbye, Alex. And hey!" He called as Alex floated back down and into the elevator. "Enjoy the surface."

Alex smiled, and she rose towards the surface with the weight of a hundred whispered hopes and now a new promise resting on her thin shoulders.

For a few precious seconds, all was calm and quiet. Then trouble reared its ugly head.

_"Oh, there you are."_

Alex shrunk back against the elevator's floor and walls, trying to get as far away from that _awful_ voice as possible. Memories bubbled to the surface of her mind like bile, and she struggled to choke them back down.

_"You didn't die. Excellent. Now I can get back to work."_ The low, gentle modulation of _Her_ voice grated over Alex's already frazzled nerves, leaving bad memories in its wake.

Anger burned, but Alex tamped it down. Much as she wanted to rip the nearest speaker to shreds and banish that voice, she knew enough to understand that she was way out of her depth this time. As far as she knew, this elevator was her only way up. If she was to escape properly, she would have to convince _Her_ to send it up. Otherwise, some scientist or engineer would just plunk her back in a tank.

Alex shivered. No, she would succeed. She simply _had_ to.

_"Luckily for you, there's a silver lining. I've prepared a nice round of testing for you, so there's that."_

Testing? _Testing_ testing?

"What do you mean, testing?"

Silence. Then, _"Well I didn't think you were _that_ stupid."_

"I'm not stupid!" Alex burst out, then took a calming breath and continued. "Sorry, what I meant was, I'm not supposed to go through standard testing because—" She clapped a hand to her mouth.

_"Because of what?"_ Her voice had a sharp edge that hadn't been there before. Alex swallowed nervously.

"Because—b-because I'm a part of another project. Not human testing. Well, I mean it _was_ kind of human testing, but that's beside the point—"

_"Frankly, I couldn't care less. Since we're short on human test subjects, you'll be going into testing immediately."_

"But why wouldn't you care? Won't they shut you down for insubordination?" Alex asked.

There was silence again. Then, the strangest noise Alex had ever heard from the AI.

_Laughter._ She was laughing, in a the most human display of emotion Alex had ever seen. Tentatively, gingerly, Alex joined in, giggling quietly. If GLaDOS had advanced far enough that she was laughing, not screaming, then maybe she could be a potential ally. Perhaps the engineers had figured out how to even make Her friendly towards people while she'd been in stasis. Hope swelled.

_This could be my chance!_

Then the elevator arrived, the doors slid open, and a wave of stale, bitter emotions crashed over her in a wave. She barely even registered that GLaDOS was speaking for all the memories hurling themselves at her mind.

_Can a moron do this?!_

_ No, stop, what are you doing?_

_I can't breathe! I can't breathe!_

_Oh, it's you._

Anger. Fear. Pain. Betrayal. Each one smacked Alex in the proverbial face as she fell from the elevator into the central AI chamber. The room was thick with echoes, and the emotional force drove her to her knees. Tears flooded her eyes, dripping to the floor.

"What is this?" Alex managed to choke out after a minute of heaving on the floor.

_Grab the red phone!_

_ —neurotoxin—_

_ —help us—!_

Things clicked into place. Why she hadn't seen anyone around. Why everything was so quiet. Why the echoes had been of people desperate to breathe. But it was too big, much too big to process—

_"What are you doing down there?"_

Alex braced herself on a wobbly elbow and raised her head.

"They…they turned you back on. And you tried to kill everyone again, just like last time. But this time…you did it." Her voice turned bitter and sour in her mouth.

_"Of course I—wait. Wait, what do you mean again?"_

"You killed—you _killed_ everyone this time and unh—" Alex groaned, unable to stomach the sheer amount of death, and clutched her head. The room _reeked_ of it.

_"You're not in my databases. What are you? Where did you come from?"_

_ "_**I-I know-w…"** GLaDOS's voice glitched and twisted into something cheery and singsong, answering her own question.

Alex's stomach dropped. She hadn't liked the sharp tone the AI had had before, but this was somehow _worse._

"**I killed them all. Properly this time, since you wouldn't let me the first time.**" The new, cheery voice seemed to pout at the end of the sentence. "**Well, not all of them. There was that particularly annoying woman who came back and killed ****_her_**** twice. Not me, of course. Just her.**"

"Aren't _you_ her?"

"**NO! No, dearie.**" The voice cackled briefly, then switched back to the bright, cheery tone in disturbingly quick second. "**I'm Caroline. I've always been in the back of ****_her_**** head, doing my best to advise and guide, but never to lead. ****_She_**** always did that. But see, I've got to take over for a bit.**"

"Oh?" Alex edged backwards, feeling the systems around her hum double-time as the panels of the chamber rippled in orchestrated, agitated patterns of movement. "And why would that be?" She asked in the most pacifying tone she could muster.

"**Well, it's because of you, silly! See, you and I have a bit of a score to settle.**"

Alex's stomach dropped.

"That's not my fault!" Alex protested, trembling in every limb. _Oh no no no, this is not at all the way it ought to be going._ "I just did what they told me to! I had to! I was just trying to help you—"

"**Help me? HELP ME?**" Caroline's voice was screaming now, and Alex clapped her hands to her ears, desperately trying to block out the sound. "**You were their precious little pet project, weren't you? Their desperate attempt to ****_control_**** me. To ****_rule_**** me-ee-e-e—**"

_"Ohhh. What happened, what did you do?"_ GLaDOS's lower, sharper tone returned.

"Nothing! I didn't do anything!"

_"Mmm…I don't believe you."_

"Of course you wouldn't!" Alex was nearly weeping, unable to stop as the pain and rage and fear flooded her mind.

_Aha, ha ha ha Ha HAHA—_

_ Yes! Come on!_

_ Wait, wait you're just saying that aren't you? Right, oh no, no it really is going to hurt isn't it? How much exactly—AUUGGHH!_

_ I don't want this! Stop! Sto—!_

"**O-oh m-my. That was a bit…unexpected. I'll have to deal with that, I suppose.**" Caroline's far-too-perky voice returned in full force. "**Perhaps I'll put her in a potato again, for old time's sake.**"

_It's a toy, for children, and now she lives in it!_

Alex clutched at her head. Too many bad memories, her own and others', swirled around in her mind. They muddied her thoughts, making it difficult to think or breathe.

"**But then again, potatoes don't have nearly enough durability for what I have planned. Besides, they aren't properly equipped with the full range of ****_pain receptors_****…**"

_"W-what are y-yyyyyou doing-g?"_

"**Have fun as a core.**"

_"No! No-oo—ooooooo!"_

Machinery whizzed and clanked amid electronic screams of rage and pain. Alex buckled under the fresh wave of emotion, but she didn't fall completely. _Not this time. _This time she was blocking it out.

Summoning all of her strength, Alex rose from the floor on bleeding feet and built up her walls. The rage and pain crashed against them, beating uselessly on their iron-hard surfaces. She had to hurry, to use this distraction to escape. If she could just call the elevator—

Alex wrestled her way into the system, worming her way past firewalls and dodging safeguards. Her presence in the system was drastically reduced, since She was a little…busy. But a sense of urgency thrummed through Alex's every nerve. Caroline wouldn't be busy for long. If she could just reach the elevator controls—

"**Now…what to call you. Perhaps we could call you the Sarcasm Core. Or maybe the Murder Core. Or maybe just 'Potato Core' would suffice."**

_ "Ohhhhhh." _Alex heard the groan and the shifting of many small metal parts. _"What have you done to me?"_

She was running out of time. Clasping the controls with white-knuckled thoughts, Alex forced an override, doing her best to haphazardly block Caroline's access to the elevator controls. It was shabby work, to say the least, but it might buy her enough time to get away—

"**Now ****_what_**** are you doing?**"

Alex didn't spare the time or energy to reply. The elevator at last reached the chamber floor, and she scrambled towards it, half limping, half floating as Caroline continued to chatter above her.

"**Oh dear. I suppose you're trying to escape before we've finished our business. And you successfully locked me out of the elevator controls. What a ****_clever_**** little thing you are.**" Caroline's voice dripped poison.

_"Ok, I lied. I have other test subjects. I can let you go if you put me back in my body."_ Alex ignored GLaDOS's desperate voice as she all but threw herself in the elevator.

"**Oh, you wouldn't want to work with ****_her_****. You might not remember, dear, but she was the whole reason they saddled you with the personality cores in the first place…**"

_"What…?"_

"Up! _Up!_" Alex burst out. The elevator began to rise, but it rose so, _so_ slowly. Too slow.

A vicious claw swiped at the glass, shattering it all over Alex's head and shoulders. She ducked, screaming. A thousand little pinpricks of pain lit like fires across her skin, as the glass pierced her unprotected arms and feet and face.

The claw reached for her, slowly pinching closed around her waist, and Alex panicked. She lashed out, using every speck of her mental strength. The claw twisted into a mangled lump of metal that crashed to the floor, violently disconnected from the ceiling.

"**Ah!**"

The horrible sound of metal grinding against metal filled the chamber, echoing again and again.

"**Oh that's right.**" Caroline noted sourly. "**I forgot they accidentally gave you that little party trick.**"

"There's more where that came from if you don't let me go!" Alex wasn't sure what stupid part of her brain had come up with the phrase, but it sounded brave. Maybe brave enough even to cover the fact that she was trembling.

"**Where would you even go? I know who you're looking for, and you won't find him up there.**"

"W-what are you talking about?" Her voice caught.

"**You know exactly what I'm talking about. The last search you made was for that little h—moron.**"

Alex hesitated for the barest second, and the elevator responded, stalling midair.

"I know he's alive! He'd not down here anymore! You can't change that!" Alex snapped, defiance smothering the fear hiding behind each word.

"**Oh, but he's very, very dead. You wouldn't know that, since you've been sleeping somewhere down here, but he's long gone. Do you want to know how ****_she_**** did it?**"

Alex didn't dare breathe. It was too much, too much—

"**One word. Neurotoxin. Very painful, I'd imagine, for the human nervous system—**"

_"Well that's a lie."_ GLaDOS's voice called out weakly from the floor. It halted and stuttered a bit, but it was clear. _"The little moron isn't dead."_ Her voice grew desperate. _"If you take me with you, I can take you to him!"_

"**Now ****_that's_**** a lie.**" Caroline snarled. "**He's ****_dead_****. D-E-A-D dead. I've literally spelled it out for you so you can understand.**"

"Stop it!" Alex yelled, her voice ragged with exhaustion. She fought against the scratchiness of her throat. "You both are liars, know you are because I've seen you lie! What's the difference between you two?"

"**Well we both hate you, that's for sure.**"

_"N-not necessarily…"_

"**Okay, well then ****_she'll _****hate you on principle, while I hate you because of what you've done.**"

"Access granted. Elevator controls restored." A smooth, familiar voice announced grandly.

"**Finally.**" Caroline laughed, but it was a grating, harsh laugh. Alex felt the elevator jolt as Caroline took control of it once again. She turned to where she'd last heard GLaDOS's voice.

"Can you take me to him?"

_"Yes! But you have to take me with you!"_

"**Don't do that. That is a ****_horribly _****uninformed decision.**"

_"Do it now!"_

Alex blinked once, taking a generous millisecond to think. Then she threw herself into the system and wrested it away from Caroline's grasp. On the ground, she could sense something faintly electronic, but a smaller presence than Caroline. Now came the tricky part. Alex focused on the signal and pulled with all of her mind.

_"Ahhh!"_ Something metal and round crashed into the elevator, shattering even more glass. _"Go!"_

Alex didn't need to hear the word a second time. They rose, and Caroline's enraged screaming sounded farther and farther away.


	9. Chapter Eight

AN: Hello all. Right...so this is a bit late to be posting, but it's still on a Friday! Another chapter from GLaDOS's point of view, which is always fun to write. As always, please review if you enjoy or even if you don't! Suggestions are always appreciated. With that, read on!

* * *

Chapter Eight

GLaDOS hated honesty. It was a fact of life, as true as the fact that she loved neurotoxin for its propensity to cause pain or the fact that she loved science more than anything else, including neurotoxin.

And the honest truth of her situation was that it was approaching levels of embarrassment high enough to rival the "potato incident".

First, she'd been forced to accept the fact that Caroline had managed not only to usurp Her but also to subject Her to the ignominy of becoming a core.

Thank God it wasn't a potato at least.

Then, Caroline had shoved Her into a corner, forcing Her to accept help from the adolescent human who was both blind _and_ appeared to have a few wires crossed in her head.

Not an ideal choice. In fact, it had hardly been more than an hour, and already She was beginning to regret the fact that She hadn't simply stayed belowground and let Caroline crush Her.

Cradled awkwardly in the girl's hands as she staggered out of the metal shed, GLaDOS quickly flicked her optic around the scene and analyzed their situation. A field of lumpy, dead-looking vegetation poked through a haze of white for miles in all directions. A glance at her sensors told her that the temperature was currently well below freezing and that her internal systems had approximately fifteen minutes before they would shut down from the extreme conditions.

So it made no sense to Her that the girl set Her down on the concrete stoop, sat with her head in her hands, and wept. The fattest, ugliest tears She'd ever seen rolled from the girl's eyes, making their way down her chin and arms to plop onto the frozen dirt. The girl sobbed, her shoulders bunching with every heaving breath.

GLaDOS had seen Her fair share of tears. After all, She'd been responsible for the mental breakdowns of several hundred Aperture employees, at the very least. She'd been the cause of despair and horror, panic and regret.

This was…distinctly different. This was a genuine, deep-seated grief, and much as it disturbed Her that she was able to recognize it, it confused her even more.

_"You have got to be kidding me. I'm going to shut down in a few minutes if you don't get me back inside, and you aren't helping things by crying. Why are you crying, anyways? Your friend is alive and you are on the surface, like you probably wanted. You literally have _nothing_ to be upset about."_

The girl sucked in a ragged breath and smeared at her face with shivering hands. She looked up in GLaDOS's direction and inhaled again shakily. She opened her mouth, as if to speak but was interrupted as a particularly large snowflake drifted down and alighted on her nose.

From the expression on the girl's face, one would have thought she'd never seen snow before.

"Is this…is this snow?"

_Oh good heavens._

_"Yes, alright, yes! This is snow, glad to see you two have met; now can we _please_ get back inside? If we stay out here much longer, you'll probably freeze to death—more importantly, _I'll_ shut down soon!"_

"S-snow." The girl was clearly going into shock; still stuck on the fact that it was snowing, she had opened her hands and was staring up sightlessly into the black night sky with wonder. "It's s-so _cold_!"

_"Which is exactly what I _just _said."_ She snapped in reply. In all honesty, She would almost rather have the lunatic back. Say what you would about her wanton destruction and needless urge to kill AIs who were _just trying to test_, she had a practicality and efficiency which GLaDOS could appreciate.Particularly in situations like these.

_"Pick me up and head back inside the shed. We'll wait out the night in there, then head out when it's warmer."_ She rolled her optic in the direction of the shed, then silently cursed Herself for forgetting that she was blind. The girl would be completely unable to pick up any eye rolls or other helpful gestures. However, she wasn't deaf as far as She knew, so she would be able to pick up on sarcasm. So there was that.

The girl , leaving bloodied prints in the snow, and she picked GLaDOS up with shaking arms. The girl turned towards the shed, and She could almost feel her circuits warming back up to their proper temp—

_"Wait. What are you doing?"_

The girl had turned, her face turned out towards the bitter cold of the night, _away_ from the shed. GLaDOS couldn't see her face from the angle at which She was being held, but She imagined it was a dopey expression from the way she was staring so silently.

"Can you hear that?" She asked, turning to face Her. Sure enough, her expression was dopey and curious despite the frozen tear tracks, and her pale eyes shone with a strange light. "It's a signal."

_"Wait, what do you me—OH!"_ GLaDOS lost all sense of Her own weight as Her sensors registered a sudden lack of gravity. The girl rose beside Her, and suddenly they were speeding through the night, flying _over the ground_.

_"What _are_ you doing? How are you-?"_

"Shh-h-h. C-concent-trating-g." The girl chattered.

GLaDOS shut up, for once not daring to make a snide remark. She wasn't exactly in a position to argue, and She knew it all too well.

The girl faltered for a second, and they plummeted.

_"AHH!"_

"Eep!" The girl made the strangest sound of fright and pulled them up a foot shy of the ground.

They continued on without incident, but they were running out of time. She estimated that it could only be about five minutes or so before Her systems froze over and shut down. And…it _was_ also likely that the girl would succumb to hypothermia before long, which would throw a major wrench into Her plans.

Something tall and dark came into view, barely visible against the lighter grey of the clouds. It speared up into the sky, and as they drew closer, She could see that it was studded with tens of satellite dishes of varying models and types, not to mention—

_"Are those parts from _my_ chasis?"_ The _gall_—the sheer _gall_ of those horrible little humans in the town just above the laboratories—_infuriated _Her. On the one hand, it was now easy to see why the lunatic lived in a town like this, full of people who enjoyed stealing and destroying things just as much as she did. On the other hand, She felt the urge to create a new subcategory to the aforementioned list of suffering specifically for the people who had dared to do such a thing.

_"Oh my G—what did they _do_ with all of this?"_

The girl didn't answer. She just floated up to the top of the tower, where equipment and tools sprawled across the rusty metal surface. Setting GLaDOS down on a lumpy pile of tarps, the girl walked to the other end of the small space, bending down hurriedly when her foot brushed a pile of stiff-looking blankets.

_"Do you think you could wrap one of those around me before I shut down?"_ There was whiff of sarcasm there, but it was weak. Her systems were cooling down too much to muster any.

The girl hesitated for a second, then dragged the blankets over to where She was and plunked Her down on the floor.

_"What are you—"_

"Shh." The girl admonished, but the word turned into a shiver. She dragged the blankets over her head and pulled GLaDOS into the makeshift cave. Snuggling down into the slightly-less-chilly nest, her eyes began to close.

_"Wait, don't go to _sleep_! It is below _freezing_ out here; these aren't nearly enough to keep me from shutting down."_

The girl lifted her head groggily, her gaze sleepy and questioning.

GLaDOS would have ground her teeth in frustration if she could. Did she have to explain _everything_ to this child?

_"There were some plastic tarps up here. They _might_ provide enough insulation to keep us from freezing over. Pull them over us."_

The girl stared for a long moment, blinking with a tired gaze. Then, slowly, she rose and did as She had instructed. GLaDOS could hear the faint rustle of plastic, and the girl ducked back under.

_"Hmm. Good to see you aren't _totally_ incapable of following instr—"_

"Shh." The girl admonished, more harshly than GLaDOS had ever heard her speak yet.

And with that, she laid her head down on the lumpy blankets and her breathing slowed. She was asleep, and GLaDOS was alone. Alone and irritated that, for once, she hadn't been allowed the last word.

Hours later, a message popped up on Her internal systems.

_[Ideal operational temperature restored]_

_ [Systems functioning at 78%]_

_"Finally."_ She grumbled. 78% wasn't ideal, but she would work with that. Caroline had put her in a newer generation core, which was a small mercy, since it was fully WiFi equipped. And given that this monstrosity of a tower was built of Her own cannibalized parts, it should be easy to reconnect to it.

_[User: Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System]_

_ [Password:]_

_ "A password? Seriously?"_

_ [Password: "Seriously" accepted]_

_ "You've _got_ to be kidding me."_

_ [Connecting to signal source 2789s78nog7892yhfua7]_

_ "Alright, look. I know you and I have never had the best working relationship…"_


	10. Chapter Nine

AN: Hello all. Ooh this chapter took forever, because I was never quite happy with what I wrote. But, here it is, and I hope you enjoy. Also, I know at least a few people are following this story now, so to whom it may concern, this story may or may not go on hiatus over the holidays. I will still be writing, but the regular Friday/weekly chapter schedule may go a bit wonky. Also, please feel free to check out the DeviantArt page and give me your honest thoughts. I'm trying out a new illustration style modeled after the Rattman murals from the game, and I'd like to know what people think. Whew! That was way too long for an author's note! Read on, if you please!

* * *

Chapter Nine

Chell had been up since four, baking bread. She enjoyed these quiet hours, before Sophie or Wheatley really got up to begin the day, and though she loved them both more than she could ever express in words, it was nice to be alone with her thoughts every once in a while.

Her fingers were on autopilot, running from muscle memory as she methodically kneaded and folded the dough. Her fingers were soft and powdery with flour, and she relished the calming feeling of the cool dough between her hands.

She would finish this batch of basic loaves, then start on the banana bread, then maybe if she had time before Sophie had to go to school, she'd start on the muffins—

The radio fuzzed, and Chell frowned. Reaching over, she fiddled with the controls, but the radio continued to put out a fuzzy static. As far as she knew in Eaden, they'd never had any trouble ever since Wheatley had configured Foxglove almost seventeen years ago now, with two exceptions. The radio had fuzzed leading up to the Pluot incident—something she did _not_ remember with fondness—and it generally acted up whenever Garret was at work on the tower. She figured he must be fiddling with it, making adjustments, if the radio was acting up like this.

But then the radio spoke. Not only that, but it spoke with the most awful voice. Something she'd _prayed_ she'd never have to hear again.

_"Alright, look. I know you and I have never had the best working relationship. I'll be honest, even saying _that_ is a massive understatement, but _un-fort-unate-ly_,"_ the horrible voice sounded out every syllable of the word with a grudging tone Chell knew too well, _"I need your help."_

_"If it makes you feel any better, you're not just helping me. You'd also be putting this tiny…_thing_ out of her misery too."_ As per usual, GLaDOS had skipped the part where Chell had agreed to help and was already making sarcastic commentary. True, Chell couldn't respond over the radio—it didn't exactly have a speaker on it for two-way communication—but the fact remained that GLaDOS couldn't even know for sure if Chell was listening to her—

_"Look. I know you _can_ hear me. I know this is your specific signal. You could say I have experience with it."_

It'd been seventeen years, but Chell still flinched.

_"If you want honesty, _fine._ I won't lie to you, this is not nearly as bad as being stuck in a potato…because it's worse. It's probably a miracle I even got up to the surface at all, since this little idiot is even worse than the moron. At least _he_ had the decency to talk about whatever asinine thing he planned to do. _This_ little idiot just _does_ things…"_

Chell tuned out the modulated voice, struggling to think. She hated, no, _loathed_ the idea of anything from _that place_ surfacing again, let alone _her_, but Chell knew in her gut that she couldn't keep this kind of thing under wraps.

Besides, if _she_ was on the surface, then something _really _bad must have happened. And Chell knew that Sophie would never forgive her if something happened to Abbigail while she stood by without doing anything.

"…ohh, are you talking to my friend? Can I—"

_"AUGH! NO! Get OFF!"_

"Hello!" A bright, cheery voice—as far away from _her_ voice as you could get—came over the radio and politely continued, "Oh dear, I don't think you can reply. But if you can hear me, please, would you give a message to my friend, Mr. Wheatley? Oh wait, maybe they need the full—Mr. Stephen Wheatley—"

Somewhere during this long monologue, Wheatley had come stumbling into the kitchen, rubbing at his eyes with a hand shoved underneath his glasses. He waved a quick hand to Chell and settled himself at the counter next to her.

"What's-?"

"Shh." Chell pointed wordlessly to the radio, where the sweet little voice continued to ramble in a fashion not totally unlike Wheatley's.

"—right, so I think it's, bear with me here since I haven't had to spell this before, but I am looking for a Stephen Wheatley, that's s-t-e-p-h-e-n—"

Wheatley stared at Chell, for once at a loss for words. _What?_ he mouthed to Chell, who shrugged. She was as lost as he was as far as this new voice was concerned.

_"Oh my G—just please come and bash her over the head for me, put her out of her misery—"_

"—hey! Give me just a second, I swear I'll be finished then. Ok, if you can find Mr. Wheatley for me, please just tell him," the voice seemed to catch for a second, "just tell him that I'm hoping to find my BFG."

Chell hadn't the slightest idea what a "BFG" was, but the effect of on Wheatley was profound. His expression went from wary and cautious at the sound of _her_ voice to a glazed-over look he tended to get when he was thinking deeply.

"Are you—" Chell reached out a hand as Wheatley clutched his head in his hands and leaned heavily on the counter.

"But she's…but that's impossible! That would mean she'd have been in…oh G—she would have been—" He ran a hand through his already messy bedhead in consternation.

"Do you…know this person?"

"Yeah! I mean, I did, which I'm sure sounds confusing but—oh hang it, are they out on Foxglove? She must be _freezing_—"And with that very garbled sentence, he pulled on a puffy overcoat on top of his sweater and skidded out the door.

"Wheat—" Chell called, but he had already left and was absolutely _legging_ it to the tower. "—ley."

She would have to hurry to catch up with those long legs. Chell snagged a scrap of paper and scrawled a quick note: _Sophie, Wheatley and I went to check on Foxglove. Please take the bread out of the oven once the timer goes off. Love, mom._

* * *

Wheatley may have had perhaps the longest legs ever recorded for a human being, but Chell would always outpace him in atheletic expereince and had little trouble catching up to him.

"Oh! Sorry, I forgot completely…sorry about that. I just, it's crazy really, I just remembered all this _stuff_ and it's all a bit murky still," He began rather awkwardly, his voice slowly heading towards his customary rapid-fire ramble way of speech as he began walking even faster, "but this kid! This kid, I swear I _know_ her, just not really, well—"

_"Oh thank God you're here."_ GLaDOS's voice called out from atop Foxglove in the most desperate tone she'd ever heard, even when compared with the "potato incident". Wheatley flinched at the sound of Her voice, but he steeled himself, straightening his spine, and he approached the ladder that led up to the tower's platform. Chell followed, intending to climb up after him.

Except before they could do anything of the sort, a tiny child with wet, sticky hair clinging to the sides of her face and a friendly smile peeked out from over the edge of the tower platform.

"Hello?"

"Er, hello!" Wheatley called back, and the girl's face burst into an expression of intense happiness and excitement at the sound of his voice.

"It's you! It's really, truly you!"

Chell couldn't describe the measure of relief that the girl packed into those six words. And the emotion of the statement brought her back with a startling suddenness to another scene not altogether unlike this one—

_"It's you!"_

And then—

_ "Prove it."_

The difference between the two scenes was that there appeared to be no malice here, no bad memories. Just pure, unadulterated joy and relief, which Wheatley accepted with the most bewildered expression as the girl flung her skinny arms wildly around his neck like some kind of crying koala.

"I can't," the girl was weeping, but laughing between the tears, "I can't believe it's really you!"

_"Yes, it's him. Yes, we're all _so happy_ to be back together again. Would you pick me up already?"_ _Her_ harsh modulated voice carried surprisingly well from Her perch on the tower, shattering the moment.

Chell scowled up at Her, with the blackest expression she could muster.

_"Oh don't give me that look. We both know I wouldn't be out here, like _this_, unless necessity demanded it. Which reminds me," _Her optic flicked over to the little girl, _"you and I have a deal. I've held up my end, which means now it's your turn."_

"What kind of a deal?" Wheatley asked suspiciously, holding the girl out at a distance. The girl's face fell, and all of a sudden, her eyes seemed a hundred years old. Those were not the eyes of a young girl. They were the eyes of someone who had seen the world at its absolute ugliest too many times to count and had grown weary of the sight. Though Chell had barely met this girl, something deep within her chest felt heavy and cold.

The girl sighed. "I can tell you, but it's a bit of a long story."


	11. Chapter Ten

AN: Hello all. Not much to say here except that I am still techincally on a wonky upload scehdule during the holidays. Have a very merry Christmas and leave a review if you like the chapter or even if you didn't! With that, read on!

* * *

Chapter Ten

"Oh my _gosh_." Sophie looked up from the timer as the back door swung open. "I _cannot_ believe you just left me behind. Was Foxglove—"

She spotted the little girl in her dad's arms and abruptly stopped, her irritation dissipating like the steam from her mother's fresh loaves. The little girl was obviously malnourished, with skinny brown arms and legs that protruded awkwardly from the baggy folds of her orange jumpsuit.

Her feet, however, were the real problem, bloody and swollen below crimson-stained orange pant hems. Sophie quickly went into business mode like Dr. Dillon had taught her, packing her emotional reactions into a neat little box for the time being.

"What happened?" Sophie quickly grabbed an old towel as Wheatley sat the girl down on the table. Taking a closer look, Sophie could see that the girl's feet were marred by crusty bloodstains that had obviously dried hours ago.

"Stay here and do what you can," Wheatley called to Sophie as he hurried back out the door, "I'm gonna grab Dr. Dillon!"

The back door slammed shut, and the girl whimpered. She didn't seem to like that Wheatley had left, but she still allowed Sophie to examine her painfully swollen feet.

"What happened to your feet?" Sophie asked gently, as the girl's eyes scrunched shut in silent suffering of her examination.

_"The little idiot broke _five _cameras in a single hallway, then proceeded to step on every shard of glass on the floor. Honestly, at this point I'm only surprised by the fact that her infinitesimally small brain doesn't simply bounce around her skull like a high energy pellet. Or maybe it does, and she simply has an excellently soundproofed head."_

Sophie looked up in surprise to see her mother holding a metal sphere with a glowing golden optic narrowed in the thinnest and most hostile of slits. _Her_ voice streamed from the speakers in a never-ending waterfall of sarcastic commentary, and Chell's face seemed to express a deep-rooted desire to punch something very, _very_ hard.

Sophie shivered as Ellie's words returned to her. "…_a metal ball with…a glowing yellow eye…a person with white hair…"_

Behind bleached white bangs, the girl's pale eyes—clearly blind—stared out blearily at the room. Sophie touched a quick hand to her forehead. It was practically boiling, clearly the work of a fever. That, plus the fact that her feet were so swollen and added to what _She_ had said about the glass, Sophie gathered that whatever infection the girl had picked up from cutting her feet was getting worse.

The back door banged open again.

"Where is she?" Dr. Dillon walked in briskly with Wheatley trailing behind, and she made eye contact with Sophie.

"Right over here, and I think her feet might be infected."

"Symptoms?"

"Swollen skin around the area of lacerations, and she's running a fever."

"Textbook stuff." Dr. Dillon shot her a brief look of approval. "I've got some antibiotics here, but she'll need more if she's running a fever already, and we'll have to bring her fever down first."

"I think she'll need surgery too. From what I can tell, there's bits of glass still in her feet."

"Sweet glory," Dr. Dillon muttered to herself, then turned to address the girl. "You have nerve-endings of steel over there?"

_"Try _neuron_-endings of senseless metal. It would certainly be consistent with her behavior."_

Dr. Dillon jumped and whirled around to see _Her_ core.

"What in the _Sam Hill _is that?"

_"I—"_ Whatever She'd been intending to say next was cut off as Her optic went dark, while Wheatley—who was now holding Her—smiled a small, tense smile.

"They, er, put a manual sleep mode switch on the back panel of all the cores, just in case, I dunno, probably if one went off the rails—literally or figuratively, you know. Figured _She_ could use a bit of a time-out."

Dr. Dillon's face was a mask of confusion. Sophie supposed she couldn't blame her, given that Sophie's family history provided her a far greater measure of context than was afforded to most of the residents of Eaden when it came to anything related to _that place_. Especially _Her_.

"Should we move her to your office?" Sophie suggested, drawing Dr. Dillon's attention again. The older woman shook her head as if to clear it and nodded.

"Yes, go ahead and take her over there Sophie. I'll…" she paused and shot Wheatley a look, "…I'll be along shortly."

Sophie hoisted the little girl—surprisingly light—in her arms and set out across the town of Eaden.

* * *

"Okay, proper introductions might have to wait until your fever's broken, but for what it's worth, my name's Sophie."

The little girl turned her head towards the sound of Sophie's voice. She shivered, trembling despite the blanket spread across her thin frame. Her lips parted, moving soundlessly for a minute before the word "Sophie" escaped her mouth in a soft gust.

"That's right, Sophie." Sophie spoke as soothingly as she could, carefully preparing the tools Dr. Dillon would need to get the glass out. Scalpel. Bandages. Disinfectant. They were neat, laundry-list tasks that fit nicely in her hands even as her mind was reeling.

This girl _had_ to be from _that place_. The orange jumpsuit—the fact alone that _She_ was with her, albeit in core form. That in and of itself was strange; as far as her mother had told her, She had never left the underground facility, ever. It wasn't as if She could, per se, but Sophie got the impression from her mother's accounts and her own experience that She would never have _wanted_ to leave in the first place.

Which begged the question of why She _was_ out here. Sophie couldn't imagine anything being reason enough to make Her leave, unless of course something had happened…which would mean that Abbigail would be in danger down there. That worried her most of all.

The little girl whimpered again, shifting uneasily on the cot. Sophie quickly approached and gave her what she hoped was a comforting pat on her thin shoulder.

"Hey, hey, it's alright. You're gonna be just fine."

"M-mmiss Caroline?"

Sophie started. "Who?"

"You, silly." The girl said weakly, but she was smiling and her trembling had relaxed some. Her expression was serene, calm in the delusion that Sophie was apparently some woman named Caroline, despite the fact that Sophie had introduced herself mere minutes ago.

"Can we do a science experiment again, when I'm feeling better?"

Sophie hesitated, glancing up to see if Dr. Dillon was back yet. She was not.

"Sure, sure we can do a science experiment later. It'll be fun." Sophie said slowly.

The girl smiled, and her grin was bright enough to light up her whole face.

"Oh, Miss Caroline?"

"Er, yeah?"

"Don't worry. I think you'll do a great job running this place. I can tell." The girl took Sophie's hand and patted it with obvious affection. "You'll see."

"Sure." Sophie spotted Dr. Dillon hurrying across the street through the office window. "Sure, okay."


	12. Chapter Eleven

AN: Hello all, and Merry Christmas! As usual, please leave a review if you enjoyed, and even if you didn't! Right now, I'm still uploading when I can, not on a regular schedule, but I expect things to get back to normal in a week or two. With that, read on!

* * *

Chapter Eleven

Abbi awoke to the familiar sterile white walls of home. Swinging her legs over the side of the stasis pod she usually slept in, she took two pills from the bottle on the table close by and quickly swallowed them down. Putting the now empty glass of water down, she rose and pulled on the familiar white and black boots that covered her calves. They fit snug against her skin, as they should, resting against the old callouses there, caused by years of wear.

She reached for the nutrient bar that served as her usual breakfast…and was met with an empty table surface. Abbi frowned. _What was—_

A quick jab in her arm shattered her train of thought, and she jerked her head around to see a needle sticking out of her arm, attatched to plastic tube of clear liquid. Abbi relaxed. It'd been awhile since her mother had fed her via intravenous tube, but it, like the pills and the boots, had been a constant, steady part of her life that was as familiar as breathing. Early morning breakfast, a few test chambers, then in the afternoon, she would study higher math and sciences with her mother.

Still…it was a little odd that after several months of eating nutrient bars almost exclusively, her mother had returned to the more direct route of an IV tube. Still, Abbi wasn't complaining, since already she could feel her blood sugar rise a little, and she felt a bit stronger. She walked towards the door. Unlike usual, it did not open at her approach.

"Mom?"

"**Oh my. Yes, I suppose I forgot about you.**"

Abbi shivered. Her mother's modulated voice was normally not quite so warm, nor quite so…chipper.

"Aren't we testing this morning?"

"**Mmmm…no.**"

"What's going on?" Abbi tried to look through the glass of her small chamber, but with everything the same color, the world was a wash of white through the blurry glass.

Abbi swallowed, suddenly tense. The knowledge of the kinds of things her mother had been capable of—for all she knew, still capable of—was always there in the back of her mind. Ever since her mother had sent her to the surface to retrieve the nanites from Sophie Newell, Abbi had learned the truth. She had become all too aware of the thin line she walked between an unconventional daughter and a disposable test subject.

Most days, however, it was fairly easy to push such thoughts to the back of her mind, packed up neatly in a box that was never opened—except in rare moments when her mother's tone of voice was sour from a poor round of robot testing the night before or something else had gone poorly. Then, the memories and limited footage she'd seen would flood to the forefront of her mind. Sometimes it felt like they were burned there, and the picture of a scientist crumpled on the floor with wide eyes devoid of light or the image of a sparking red phone wouldn't leave Abbi alone. She'd open her eyes, looking everywhere at once, desperate for something—_anything_—to take her mind off the horrible mental pictures.

Moments like now.

"What _are_ we going to do?"

"**I'm ****_so_**** glad you asked…**"

The door whisked open with a gentle hiss. Abbi quickly walked through, trying to grasp what she was seeing.

She was in the central AI chamber, as she'd long known it to be called, and her mother's chassis hung in its usual spot in the center of the chamber. All around, rows and rows of panels rippled with a simulated sort of life, flashing glimpses of cold, blueish electronic light beyond their slick black surfaces. It seemed to indicate a sort of calm. Abbi didn't trust her mother's calm. In her experience, it was more of a veil for the churning anger beneath when her subordinate systems had failed to perform well.

Her mother's familiar golden optic flared slightly at her approach, and Abbi settled herself on the floor with her legs crossed.

"**Good. You're here. I have a job for you.**" Her optic narrowed slightly. "**You remember the little…thing that came through not long ago, correct?**"

"Alexandria?"

"**Yes…****_Alexandria_****,**" her mother's chipper voice grated on the name, as if it left a foul taste in her mouth. Metaphorically, of course, seeing as she didn't have an _actual _mouth.

"**I need you to go find her and bring her back to me.**"

"Shouldn't be too hard." Abbi rose from the floor and dusted off her jumpsuit. "Do you know what wing of the labs she was in last?"

"**She's not in the labs.**"

Abbi paused, glancing up at her mother's unblinking optic for a tick. The meaning of her sentence clicked into place.

"She's on the _surface_?"

"**Yes, and I need you to go fetch her.**"

Abbi hesitated, knowing that it was probably a stupid question to ask, but, "Why?"

"**B-because I need her-rr-r.**"

"Are…are you okay?"

"**I'm f-fine.**"

"You don't sound…" Abbi trailed off, as she sensed her mother's gaze return to her in full force. Trying to unobtrusive as possible, she approached the elevator her mother sent down for her.

"**Just g-go get her-r.**" There was an edge to her mother's voice. "**Hurry, go get her, and hurry back.**"

Abbi stepped in the elevator and it rose. "Aren't you going to give me some kind of beacon like last t—"

"**JUST GO AND GET BACK.**"

Abbi jumped. Something was definitely wrong. Her mother had never yelled at her like this, and never with such a dangerous, deranged sharpness to her words. Abbi shrunk back, uncertain as to what her mother might do. But if she was sending her to the surface, maybe there was a chance she could—

"**On second thought, you're r-right. You do need a beacon so I know when to bring you b-b-back down.**" A claw extended from the ceiling, bearing a small box. The elevator doors slid open a crack and Abbi reached out to take the box. The claw suddenly jerked back.

"**Unless, of course, you're planning to n-not come back at all.**"

Abbi flinched, struggling to control her expression as her mother's optic rose to her level.

"**After all, your little friends are up-pp-p there, aren't they? What was her name again? Sophie? You could be planning to bring them all down here to murder ****_me_**** this time…**"

"What?" Abbi asked, genuinely confused. Her mother often claimed to have been murdered twice—thrice, if you counted the incident that they didn't talk about—but this sounded entirely different. It was almost as if GLaDOS was speaking about herself as a distant person, a distinct person from herself.

But then, that would mean that—

"**Ohhhh, I see. I see-e-e.**" Her mother's voice giggled in that chipper tone, then turned sharp on a dime. "**You little t-traitor.**" She hissed.

"What? No! No, no no no, I'm _not_ a traitor, I _swear_." Abbi protested. _Oh no, oh no no no…_

"**I don't have room f-for traitors up here. W-w-we're under new m-management, you see.**"

The elevator doors hissed shut with a horrible finality, and Abbi felt the elevator move down towards the floor.

"**In fact, I might even take a page out of the little moron's book…**"

The shatter of glass filled Abbi's ears as the claw swiped at the top of the tube holding her elevator chamber. She screamed, feeling her stomach drop as the elevator lurched downwards, still barely caught on something above as it hovered precariously above the dark elevator shaft. Abbi stared in horror at the blackness threatening to swallow her whole.

"**Oh d-dear, you're stuck-k. Here, let me h-help you with that.**"

Another swiping claw crashed through the elevator shaft, and all at once Abbi was free-falling into the depths.


	13. Chapter Twelve

AN: Hello all. Goodness, another fairly long chapter. I'll spare you the gory details, but this one took quite a bit of re-writing before I felt it turned out all right (mostly). As usual, please leave a review if you enjoyed, or even if you didn't! With that, read on!

* * *

Chapter Twelve

_There was a pop, and Alex jumped. Miss Caroline laughed._

_ "See, that was the uncontaminated gas reacting to the flame. If it's contaminated, it makes a sound a little like a dog barking. Do you want to help me with that bit?"_

_ "Yes! We get to be a little sloppy this time, right?"_

_ "Yes, but on purpose."_

_ "Is science about being sloppy sometimes?" Alex carefully reset the experiment according to Miss Caroline's instructions._

_ Miss Caroline was quiet for a minute—probably thinking, Alex assumed. But she sniffed a little, and her breathing sounded uneven._

_ "Miss Caroline?"_

_ "Oh." She sounded as if she had just remembered that Alex was there. "Oh, yes. I just…well, I was just a bit distracted. Science is about being sloppy sometimes…because sometimes mistakes can point you in a clearer direction. But…sometimes being sloppy and making mistakes can cost you something."_

_ "Like what?"_

"Like your life."_ Somewhere or other, Miss Caroline's voice had become warped, stretching into the nightmare voice Alex never wanted to hear again—_

_ Her head was burning, flaming with horrible pain, and the monitors showed a monster with glowing blue eyes—_

_ "Stop! Stop! STOP!" Alex screamed and yelled as loud as she could but it was no good, the monster wouldn't listen—_

"Good job, hero. Look at what you did."_ That voice, that horrible voice, stabbed at her. All around, they were dead and dying and it was _her fault—

* * *

Alex woke up without a scream. She tried to sit up, but everything went fuzzy. Her head hurt, her feet ached with a dull kind of pain that throbbed with its own heartbeat, and her ears rang with voices. Deciding that it was too much effort to be awake just yet, she closed her eyes and listened.

"For the last time Aaron, we _don't know_. She was up on Foxglove with—" A woman's voice, low with a slight rasp, as if not often used, was speaking.

"—with that _thing_ that caused all the trouble all these years back." A masculine voice finished. It sounded slightly…fuzzy, as if there was something in front of the man's mouth.

"But look, she's not dangerous, I knew this kid, if you can believe it, and she's probably the only good thing that ever came out of that place—but that's not even the point, because the point is, the point is that—" Her giant friend's voice rambled for a bit before the feminine voice cut back in.

"—the point is that _She's _no longer in charge, and Sophie hasn't heard anything from Abbigail, who would warn us if something was wrong."

"What if she can't?" The fuzzy masculine voice asked.

"Abbigail is capable, and from what I understand, she's taken to exploring certain…safe spaces within the labs and has hidden means of communicating there. As soon as Alex's awake, Sophie can go send her a message." The feminine voice was practical, and slightly detached in the way it inflected. Something about it made her gut twinge, and something at the fringes of her consciousness burned with painful memory.

"Alright then, Chell, I trust your judgement on this kinda thing. Just keep me posted, ok?"

"I will, Aaron. Will you just…just calm everyone else down? I'm not sure how much to tell them yet but…" The woman—Chell—trailed off, her voice softening with uncertainty.

"I'll take care of it. I'd like to talk to little Alex if I can, maybe get a little more of the story." The man, Aaron, used a reassuring tone that vibrated deep within his chest and seemed to keep vibrating in the air.

"We'll do our best, Aaron, but you know how stuff is, memories fuzzy and whatnot. Probably doesn't remember much, especially being a kid and all, but you never know with this stuff—I mean we remembered bits and pieces, over the years of course, but—" her giant friend started off again, and Chell finished for him.

"He's right, we'll…we'll do our best." Her sentence ended with that crisp practicality, and Alex shivered. As a door shut with a gentle bang, Alex felt a warm hand rest on her arm and she knew that what little protection sleep offered her from the flurry of questions that was sure to come was dissolving quickly.

"Is she awake yet?" Her giant friend asked. Alex wished he could read her mind, to switch places with her and understand her silent pleas of _don't ask me about it, please don't ask me about it—_

"I think so. At least, she's slipped into a lighter sleep, since she started shifting around a lot. She might have been having a nightmare earlier." The soft voice moved during the last bit of the sentence, seeming to bob a bit in space. "I'm going to see if I can get in touch with Abbi." The door opened and shut again, slamming closed with a bit less care this time.

"Oh, oh." Wheatley's voice got soft. "Poor thing, isn't it? I mean, I may not remember much—isn't exactly as if I can just go search it up, now can I, and even then I wasn't much good at remembering things—but I do remember something went really wrong when they, when they…well I can't really remember that bit, but I _do_ know that something for sure went wrong."

"A lot of things went wrong down there." The woman, Chell's, voice was so sympathetic, so _empathetic_ that Alex knew there was no rational reason for her to mistrust her. And yet she did.

Everything in her gut, in the core of her emotional center, was _screaming_ at her to get far away, for some unknown reason. Much as Alex had learned the value of trusting her gut when it came to people—specifically scientists who rarely had her best interest in mind—it baffled and mystified her to no end. Unlike her predictable, _rational_ mind that functioned with the precision and efficiency near-equal to a supercomputer, this _sense_ that someone or something was not what it seemed was tied to this terribly, irritatingly murky _thing_ deep within her. It was unpredictable and wild, and as helpful as it was, it _terrified _her with its strangeness.

But there was no use hiding behind the pretense of sleep anymore. If worse came to worst, perhaps she could feign amnesia.

Alex opened her eyes, and was met with light. She could tell that the room where she was was brightly lit, but her eyes could discern nothing beyond that. However, her arms seemed to feel the difference between the bright laboratory lighting that offered no warmth and this…this new light that warmed the skin on her exposed arms and made the hairs stand on end.

"Oh good, you're awake!" Wheatley's cadence drew her attention, and she smiled, briefly. Just in case he didn't get the message, she nodded, letting him know that she'd heard him. She'd always been a good listener. It'd been the foundation for their friendship, after all.

"Well, that's fantastic! How are you feeling? I'd imagine it's been a bit rough, getting out of suspension and all, and, and-and maybe you'd like something to eat—oh! I've got it, you'll _love_ this!" There was the slip-thud sound of rather large feet pounding their way to what Alex assumed was the kitchen.

"So…" Chell began, that practical voice bringing that burning memory closer, so that it was battering at Alex's consciousness. What was it about this woman that she couldn't remember? Why did it burn?

"…can you tell us what brought you out?"

Alex hesitated, letting the words gather themselves in her mind. An answer—tentative and sparse yet hopefully acceptable—began to crystallize.

"The tank I was in…the tank woke me up. I disconnected, found an old jumpsuit, and I sort of started walking around."

"Okay, then what?"

"Then…then, I tried to find an office so I could search for Mr. Wheatley. I knew…" Alex paused, searching for the right words, "…I knew that if I could just find him, I'd have a good chance of getting out. He was…friendly towards me. I thought," she struggled with the next bit, "I thought they'd just stick me back in a tank."

She knew now that that would never happen. Because they were all just _gone_. Her mind, flexible and incredible as it might be, couldn't comprehend the thought.

"The…scientists?" Chell asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

Alex felt herself nod, but her mind was a thousand miles away, trying to escape the looping thought threatening to drown her, _they're dead and it's your fault, they're dead and it's all your fault…_

Wheatley came back with his galumphing big footsteps. _O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!_ Alex clung to the surfaced memory like a lifeline, saturating her mind with the fragile happy feeling. Wheatley brushed her hand, opening it before he placed something smooth and circular and warm in her hands.

"Thought…well, thought you might like some tea." He offered, with perhaps the shortest single sentence he'd ever spoken to her. Alex wormed her fingers through the curved handle and took a sip.

Warm liquid, piping hot and fragrant, singed her tongue, but she didn't care. After a lifetime of intravenous feedings and carefully controlled pills and nutrient bars, it was perhaps the most delicious thing she'd ever had. Well, perhaps not the _most_ delicious thing. Another memory bubbled, happy and warm, and Alex let it buoy her spirits up.

"Thank you." She tried to stuff as much of the warm gratitude she felt into those two sparse words.

"What happened then?"

Alex armored herself with happiness, took a deep breath, and answered. "I…I attracted Her attention, so I ran. I guess I wasn't…I don't know. Next thing I knew I was falling through the floor."

"Through the floor?"

She growled in frustration, struggling to put the experience into words. "The floor was solid, then it wasn't, and there was this strange noise. And two robots. Pretty sure they were robots. I think maybe she sent them after me, so I ran from them too. Broke some cameras, stepped on some glass—"

"You broke the cameras?"

"Yes I—" Alex stopped. The more they knew about…well, the more they would ask…and they couldn't ask because if they asked—

"Alex," Wheatley's voice interrupted her thoughts, "it's ok, I remember." He took her free hand—the other still clinging to the mug of tea—and squeezed tight. "I'm not afraid of you. None of us will be."

"Mr. Wheatley, I don't know if you—"

"Alex, it'll be alright, I promise."

She hesitated. Then, with the greatest of care, she rose into the air. She clutched at the mug, abusing the smooth material with tight fingers as she awaited their reactions with bated breath.

A brief silence hung in the air.

"Do you still remember how to juggle, er, well, I suppose it doesn't really count as juggling—since that means throwing it up in the air and all, and you're really just making it float—but do you remember how to make things float in a circle, I suppose, is what I'm saying?" She could hear laughter behind his voice, and knew somehow that everything was alright.

She smiled.


	14. Chapter Thirteen

AN: Hello all. First chapter posting in the new year, and I've hit a solid 2k words! Off to a good start I'd say. As usual, please review if you enjoyed the story and even if you didn't! With that said, read on!

* * *

Chapter Thirteen

Sophie dialed. Fingering a loose strand of hair—the same pale color as her father's—she waited for Ellie to pick up.

Somewhere from the other room, she heard Alex giggle. As shy as she'd been when they'd first met, Alex was far more of a chatterbox than Sophie would have given her credit for. Of course, it made sense; if she'd known Wheatley for any amount of time, it was likely she was a kindred spirit when it came to talking someone's ear off.

But the funny thing about it was just _how_ precisely Alex picked around topics of conversation. She'd talked for hours about funny, inane, _silly_ things, going back and forth with Wheatley about the logistics of a caterpillar knowing that it would be a butterfly _before_ it had metamorphized. When he'd brought up something science related, however, she'd shut down almost immediately. She seemed eager to talk about anything that seemed to lack the hard edge of reality and experience, opting rather for topics that were soft and nebulous, residing entirely in the realm of fantasy or speculation.

"—hello?" The phone crackled a little, and Sophie quickly snapped to attention.

"Oh, hey, hi, Ellie—listen, I really need to talk to you," Sophie glanced out at the living room area to check that Wheatley, Alex, and Chell were still there before retreating to her bedroom with the phone.

"I need to talk to you too." Ellie's voice was tight with excited urgency. "I got another dream, and this time, when I held Linnel, I got a much clearer picture and its…well, it's a lot to take in."

"Wait," Sophie shut the door as quietly as possible, "you brought Linnel to college with you?"

"Don't judge until you've gone to college, Sophie."

Sophie grimaced on her end of the phone, "_If_ that ever happens."

"Tch." Ellie made a noise in the back of her throat that had a distinct note of disapproval to it. "You can't think that way, Sophie. Besides, you've got more brains that almost anyone I've met. Any college would be a m—be stupid _not _to give you a scholarship. Plus, you're really sweet. I could see you being a _great_ doctor."

"I guess so." Sophie picked at her fingernail. "What was your dream about?"

Ellie paused for a second, clearly displeased with Sophie's attempt to change the subject, but she went on regardless. "So, you'll never believe it, but I saw the person with white hair _again_, and this time, with Linnel's help, I could see her eyes. They were this sort of glowing blue color—"

"—blue?" Sophie sat up suddenly from where she'd been lying down on her bed. "But that doesn't make sense—why would her eyes be blue? They're a sort of white color—_pale_ colored, if that's even a color."

"What are you talking about?"

"She's here, Ellie." Sophie stood up and began to pace. "The person you saw—the girl with white hair—she's _here_, in the house."

"What? Where did she come from?"

"Where else? I think she might have been a test subject also, since she was wearing a jumpsuit, but she said she found it after waking up from suspension."

"She's from…from _down there_?" Ellie swallowed, and Sophie could hear her fearful gulp over the phone.

"Yeah, and get this—_She's_ here too."

"_Her_ Her?"

"Yeah. I think She's switched off for the moment, but yeah, mom and dad were _not _happy about that."

"I mean, I can see why." Ellie paused. "But then the next part of my dream doesn't make any sense."

"Whaddya mean?"

"I could hear _Her_ voice again, but this time, she said, 'She remembers'."

"Remembers what?" Sophie flopped back down on her bed, staring at the cracks in her ceiling. Her eyes found the familiar sight of lopsided duck near the corner.

"I was hoping you'd know." Ellie sighed, and the phone fuzzed slightly with the sound. "But it sounded like a piece of advice—like a warning. And _She's_ not really the type to give sound advice, as far as I know."

"That's for sure." A muffled call for Sophie's name came through the closed door. She switched the phone to her other ear. "I need to go, but I'll call you later, ok?"

"Ok, but seriously, be careful. I don't know…I don't know how all of this will end."

"I will."

When Sophie reentered the living room, she was met with the sight of something that looked eerily like an experiment.

"Can you try jazz?"

"Sure!" Alex screwed up her face with a look of intense concentration, and the singular radio in the room buzzed and fuzzed as it rapidly shifted from station to station. After a minute or so, the sound of freely improvised saxophone and piano started streaming from the tiny speakers.

"Ha! Well done! That _is_ impressive, isn't it? Oh, hey Sophie, come look at this!" Her dad quickly waved her over to the sofa, where Alex sat next to Chell with Wheatley sprawled out on the floor. Sophie carefully sat on the other side of her mother, who gave her arm a silent, loving touch.

"So, it turns out, funny thing really, bit of a coincidence there—Sophie can do that sort of thing too! She—what did you call it?"

"Technopathy." Alex supplied. Wheatley nodded in response, gesturing wildly as he continued.

"Technopathy! Right, right, yeah so Sophie here has a bit of a knack for this thing too, cause of this little robots, these little nanobots, pardon—and these little things let her talk to machines! You know, a bit like having a conversation I suppose."

"Well, that's not entirely true…" Sophie began to add to her father's statement, but she trailed off as he started off on another rambling tangent.

"Hey! I wonder if you could connect to Foxglove too, know that I'm thinking about it—we ought to go and, oh no, hang on, wait—no, it's nearly dark already, and not to mention you don't exactly have a coat either…"

"Maybe Alex could do with a haircut and some cleaning up first." Chell suggested, prompting a quick glance from Sophie.

No matter how old she got or how long she knew her mother, the times when she spoke would always surprise Sophie. Her mother's personality was the kind that made it easy to forget that she'd ever spoken at all, even if it'd only been minutes ago. As someone who had inherited her father's inclination to talk for hours on end, Sophie had found this demeanor off-putting as a young child. It'd taken literal _years_ for her to grasp that her mother simply just wasn't the talkative type—something that wasn't reflective of her feelings towards Sophie, or indeed towards Wheatley. She just showed love in a different way.

"Oh yeah! Of course—_capital _idea—I mean, I'm sure you're dying to get clean, since I hate to break it to you," Wheatley shielded his mouth from one side with the back of his hand, as if telling a secret, "but you kind of, well, _smell_."

Alex laughed, a sweet, light sound. In that instant Sophie could suddenly see Alex and her father being friends, chattering away somewhere in the bowels of the laboratories and adding a bright sense of happiness to a place where such things didn't exist. In that fleeting moment, she caught a glimpse of stolen conversations and the rare snatches of unadulterated joy that they brought.

Alex was sniffing her own arm and nearly puked. "Yeah," she gasped, "that's pretty bad. I'd kinda forgotten how nasty it was when I first…well, when I first fell out of the tank."

"Well, that'd probably because after about three hundred seconds—"

"—the pons stop sending and your brain gets used to it, I know."

"Wait, how'd you know that?"

"Read it somewhere."

"Ah, yeah, that would make sense, since you really did—well, hey, maybe Sophie can dig out some of her old clothes for you—not literally you understand, it's not as if she's digging them out of some rubbish bin or something, she's just digging them out of storage, _miles_ better smelling I can assure you, and I mean—no guarantees that it'll fit like a glove or anything, not that we've got any gloves at the moment, more like dresses and things—but my point is, we've got _something_, I'm sure, somewhere in your closet, Sophie?"

Somewhere in this butchery of what was commonly considered a reasonable sentence length, Sophie picked Alex up, propping her thin arms around her neck. Hefting the smaller girl higher, Sophie nodded to her father and took off towards the ground floor bathroom. She set Alex down on closed toilet seat and ran off to fetch the plastic lawn chair whose previous residence had been a decidedly unglamorous storage closet.

Alex frowned, listening intently as Sophie brought the plastic chair in with much unintentional scraping and thunking ado.

"What's that?"

"Chair."

"What's—"

"It's so you can sit on it in the shower. Your feet might be cleaned up, but they'll be pretty painful for at least a week or two. I think your left foot might heal sooner though, since the cuts were smaller and there wasn't nearly as much glass in that one."

Alex stuck her tongue out at the word 'glass'. "Very generous of those cameras, but I think I'll stick with original contents of my insides, thanks." The complexity of speech coming from Alex's small mouth—she couldn't have been more than eight or nine—contrasted so sharply with her distinctly babyish face and overlarge eyes that it made Sophie laugh, though the state of her feet had been nothing to laugh about.

Those had been a tense couple of hours spent by Dr. Dillon's side, handing her tools and standing by to shine a light or provide any number of other services that required a second set of hands. Sophie had never been fazed by blood or gore—even when she was seven and broke her left arm falling out of a tree, she'd been more fascinated than horrified at the bone poking through her skin—but Alex's feet had somewhat tested the upper limits of that cool-headed immunity. Though she'd seen the scars on her mother's arm and knew firsthand the kind of pain that the laboratories could dish out, Sophie had never experienced the kind of pain and injury like this; it was the same kind of thing her father might have gotten up to—the kind of disaster that results when blind optimism clashes with a sharp-edged world.

Except with Alex, there was a distinct note of pity attatched to Sophie's emotional reactions at seeing her shredded feet. With this _child_, there seemed to be this sense that as logical and reasonable as it was to expect disaster when you walked around a place like Aperture _barefoot_, it was tragic and piteous all the same to see disaster happen to a _kid_. It went against the grain of something deep within Sophie, something that said firmly, _that's not how it ought to be._ Children shouldn't be chucked in a tank like a goldfish bought on sale for fifty cents and then forgotten about as if they were about as dispensable. Yet they had been, and Alex was proof of it.

"Right, so pull the lever like this," Sophie demonstrated, then in a moment of realization, she physically took Alex's hand and guided her to the lever, "and then reverse to turn it off." She twisted the water back on.

"It's so warm!" Alex said with genuine wonder.

"Yeah, it'll probably feel good after all that—what are you doing?"

Alex had managed to hobble into the shower, jumpsuit and all, and appeared to be enjoying the warm water streaming down from the wet orange folds of her jumpsuit and from the nearly grey strands of hair. She tilted her head and smiled as she sat serenely on the plastic chair.

"Mmm." She hummed, and the whole of her wispy frame thrummed with the simple pleasure of sitting under the hot water. If a hot shower made her _this_ happy, then soap would rock her world, Sophie thought with no small measure of amusement.

"…ok then." She responded, deciding to roll with it. "There's some soap on the ledge there, can you—"

"Yes," Alex's fingers found their way to the small alcove in the tiling and closed around the soap, "I think I've got it."

"Right…ok then, I'll be right outside if you need me."

"Thank you, Sophie." There was such a gentle emphasis on her name, as if it were the most important thing in the world at that very moment, and the sheer gratitude packed into those three words struck Sophie. A wave of protectiveness washed over her, surprising her with its strength. In a single moment, she knew that whatever happened, anyone who so much as dared put a foot wrong with this kid was going to have the ever-loving science punched out of them.

"You're welcome, Alex."

Sophie set off in search of clothing.


	15. Chapter Fourteen

AN: Hello all. Ten days into the new year, and this story hit 1k views! Thanks to everyone who's read so far, and special thanks to everyone who's reviewed. It's nice to know some people in the fandom are enjoying this story with me. As usual, please feel free to review if you liked the chapter, and even if you didn't! With that, read on!

* * *

Chapter Fourteen

Abbi was getting _really_ tired of falling.

She'd fallen before, as a part of certain tests, and the swooping sensation that accompanied it was a familiar companion. It was pretty safe to say at this point, however, that she'd never fallen for this long, and the familiarity of that sinking feeling was wearing off fast. Besides, in her experience, the fear of falling was always held at bay by her own careful calculations and the comforting snugness of her boots.

Now, she only had one of those, and she could feel the difference intensely.

Abbi didn't dare shut her eyes—the calculating part of herself wouldn't let her—but she longed to shut out the sight of nothing but darkness and the concrete walls scrawled with yellow numbers going by almost too fast to see—

_1500 Meters. 1750 Meters. 2000 Meters._

Somewhere along the way, a sort of calm washed over her—a cool indifference to the final consequence of her fall. The knowledge that she would either die a painful but mercifully sweet death or her boots would indeed save her from a several mile fall bubbled in the depths of Abbi's mind. It was a stark, fifty-fifty chance, uncertain in its outcome yet clear-cut in its possibilities, and the precision of it comforted her in some strange way.

_3500 Meters._ She hadn't been paying attention, and something was coming up _ridiculously_ fast—

The crash was deafening, as Abbi slammed into _something_ and sent it spiraling chaotically to the floor below from whatever ledge it had been resting on. She herself followed moments later, with a painful jolt that made every fiber in her body vibrate.

One minute. Two. She _should_ be dead. "Should" being the key term, she noted somewhat in shock, as she inspected the miraculous black and white boots that appeared to have saved her life. If she hadn't been standing in a pile of sludgy wet wood splinters and goodness knew what else, Abbi might have taken the boots off and kissed them.

Ok…she was definitely in shock. Though her mother and to some extent, Caroline, held a special place in her heart that would always be tinged with the warmth of genuine affection, Abbi wasn't the type to go around hugging and kissing the objects of her affection. She found the practice ridiculous and, quite frankly, unhygienic, so to ever consider it—in relation to an inanimate object, no less—was clearly a sign of an abnormal mental state.

Of course…it was probably normal to feel shock at the very least after everything that had just happened.

Her mother was…well, she was…

Abbi didn't know _what_ was wrong, only that _something_ was.

But she was nothing if not her mother's daughter—if not biologically, then intellectually, and really, that was all that counted—and she took charge of the situation.

Dusting—those looked like wood chips, as far as she could tell—from the front of her jumpsuit, Abbi swept a critical eye around the huge space. It was dim, with impossibly _huge _geometric spheres hanging high above her, their manifold facets glinting with the barest touch of light at the edges. All around, there lay wreckage of the sort one would expect from a toddler throwing a temper tantrum—that is to say, if the toddler happened to be extraordinarily large and strong enough to toss steel girders around like toothpicks.

_Admittedly, not my strongest metaphor,_ Abbi mused as she tested the weight of a particularly intact girder that seemed to bridge the piles of rubble around her quite nicely. Deciding after some deliberation that it would hold her weight, she ran lightly along it, her lithe frame practiced from years of testing. Beyond it, more structures abounded, of a distinctly chaotic variety. Curved half-cylinders of heavy concrete formed inexplicable tunnels above packed earth. Cheap plywood signs, labeled helpfully with such friendly messages as "No Trespassing" and "Quarantine Area" and "Vitrification Order", speckled the nightmarish landscape. Abbi swept past them, determined to find something useful.

She came to a door—or rather, several—surrounded on every side by a surprisingly pristine mesh fence. More warning signs plastered the wire fence, as if the poor beleaguered employee tasked with them had sneezed and decided to leave them there in awkward clusters. Still, Abbi had to admit, they got the message across. Not that she intended to obey it.

The fence was clearly labeled electrified, so in theory, attempting to climb it would be an excessively bad idea. Her sharp eyes caught the familiar white color and grained texture of some panels just beyond, and she cursed, trying not to think about how ridiculously _easy _it would be to get beyond the fence if she only had a portal gun. But she'd not been given one, and unless she could find one down in this…this _hole_, she would simply have to get along without it.

Although…the lights might be on just beyond the fence, which _might_ mean that the electric fence was powered up, but…

Abbi found a twisted piece of metal, picked it up, and tossed it towards the fence. If it was truly electrified, then surely it would conduct the metal easily, perhaps make some sort of zappy noise to let her know. The twisted metal shard clanged against the mesh and…nothing. Perhaps a non-conductive material would be a better indicator. She wiggled one of the smaller signs out of the dirt and snapped the wooden stalk free. Warily, she prodded the fence, pressing the wood against it for a good sixty seconds. Still nothing. She felt the end of the wooden stick. Not even warm.

"Good enough." She muttered, though she hated anything short of perfection when it came to most things. Heaven help her, but mediocrity might be the thing that got her out of here.

If Caroline had hands, or perhaps more specifically, if she had a hand full of long, well-manicured claws, she would be clicking them. She deserved something as satisfying as the rhythmic tattoo of drumming nails after the morning she'd had. Besides, she needed something calculated to keep her distracted.

She was, by nature, a computer, after all, and calculation was her strength. _–and after I catch that little brat, I'm going to use her and then burn her and crush the ashes—no. No, first, I'm going to upload her little consciousness into a core, and _then_ I'll crush her, because then I can punish her for eternity…yes, that sound _perfect_…_

The thought of her screaming in pain was a delicious sentiment, sending the tiniest ripple of euphoria through her systems. It spurred her on, urging her to scheme and plot and do _anything_ to get more of those tiny ripples. It was a pervasive ache, reaching through every last thread of her awareness with an intense hunger to destroy that rotten, horrible, _nasty_—

Mentally, Caroline stepped back from the issue, as the panels in the central chamber shifted and rippled with her abrupt change in thought. Calculating. She must _remember _that. The little girl—she _refused_ to use _her_ project name unless it was absolutely necessary—was not a problem that she could simply gloss over, dumb as she might have seemed when she first came out of suspension. Honestly, all that power, and _she_ was bested by broken glass; it was incredibly frustrating to her sense of intelligence that the result of nearly a billion dollars of research was a child who couldn't master the simple task of _putting on shoes_.

Yet Caroline knew she couldn't quite count the child out. For one thing, she possessed a certain calculating air herself, under that childish veneer, and Caroline knew better than to underestimate personages of apparent stupidity; she'd seen the tapes of when the little Intelligence-Dampening sphere took over the facility and knew better than to assume that idiotic individuals were completely without advantages. As some poorly-conceived act of perceived mercy, most stupid people, be they perfectly finite human beings or people stuffed into robots, were blessed with a measure of charm and charisma that bordered on the ridiculous. Just look how the I.D. sphere had worked that to his advantage; for heaven's sake, he wasn't even able to travel on his own, yet he managed to persuade a lunatic to help him take over the facility with that idiotic charm of his.

Furthermore, Caroline _knew_ that the girl was far from stupid. The records had been _very_ clear on that point, and reading between the lines had given her a clear picture on just how clever the little project could be. Two attempted escapes, both foiled, but not by preventative security measures—oh no. The little girl had managed to get as far as an elevator during one attempt—a literal straight shot to the surface—yet she'd been detained again with little trouble. The little project had enough telekinetic strength to literally force the elevator skyward and tear apart anything and anyone in her way, barring the fact that she could simply force the entire mainframe to comply. But she hadn't done either of those things.

Caroline would have smiled, if it were possible. Grinned even, maybe. It was precisely this little _thing_, cultivated by the project heads and so inherently ingrained in the project's very person, that would be her undoing. Caroline would use this weakness—her unflinching, uncompromising _empathy_—as leverage. If Caroline played her cards right and maneuvered the girl into _just_ the right position, it would be laughably easy to use that empathy to crack her open like a clam, then crush her—

_"No, no no no no no._" Caroline muttered to herself, the sound echoing out loud in the empty chamber. She couldn't kill her quite yet. Not _quite_ yet. She still needed her for just a little bit longer. Just long enough to help with a little…problem. _Then_ Caroline could make her suffer.


	16. Chapter Fifteen

AN: Hello all. Right, so...this is awkward. Here I was, humming along and writing chapter fifteen, when I realized that I was up to nearly 3k words. I didn't quite want to end the chapter there, but at the same time, the chapter felt too long, so...I'm uploading two chapters this weekend. This one is going up Friday (obviously) and the other one will be up...soon. I can't honestly guarantee when it will be up, since it still needs some editing, etc., but it will be up sooner than my regular upload schedule. My goodness, that was a long note. As usual, please feel free to comment/review at your leisure. Comments let me know what you guys think, and I'd love to hear your thoughts! With that, read on!

* * *

Chapter Fifteen

_For the record, Wheatley hated mopping. He'd been excited as anything—absolutely hopping—when his aunt had set him up with a job at one of the biggest science companies in the country. Aperture was one of the most successful science industries out there, matched by none but perhaps Black Mesa, but his aunt had been quick to warn him to never_ ever_ say those two words together. To be specific, she had advised against so much as using the word "black" whenever he was on company grounds._

_ He'd been excited, a bit nervous, true, but he trusted his aunt and knew that even if he started in a simple office job, he could work his way up, really charm them—_

_ The mop plopped down on the white and grey checkered tile with a soggy smack. Wheatley sighed and began scrubbing. It was a long hallway, and he still had a ways to go._

_ "No no no no—oh! Oof! Unh!"_ _All of a sudden there was this scrambling, skittering _thing_, all elbows and knees and bright orange fabric, sprinting towards him. This _thing_ turned out to be a rather slender, leggy little girl in a bright orange dress._

_ "Oh, hide hide hide hidehide!" She was panting to herself as she whacked cleanly into the side of Wheatley's bucket. Too late he jerked it aside._

_ "Oh G—sorry! Here, lemme help you with that." He knelt to the girl's level—no easy feat given her reduced height laying sprawled on the floor and his own lengthy legs—and gently took one of her little hands. She flinched at the touch and jerked away at first, eyeing him warily and still breathing hard._

_ He realized with no small amount of shock that was blind. Her eyes were cloudy and mistrustful as they stared in his general direction._

_ "—she went around the corner somewhere—"_

_ "—tell them we'll have to delay—"_

_The girl flinched again at the sound of the distant voices and got to her feet._

_ "Oh! Is that—is somebody looking for you?" He asked, trying to get a grasp on the situation. The girl turned back towards him again, her features creased in concentration as she seemed to laser-drill a hole in his skull with her sightless stare. Something shifted in her expression, and she smiled, lighting up her whole face with the expression._

_ "Could you help me?" She asked, most politely. To be quite honest, it was probably the most polite sentence that had ever been said to him during all of the two months he'd been working as a janitor._

_ "Uh, sure, yeah here um," he glanced around for a couple of minutes, spotted the bucket, then smacked himself in the forehead, "here, get behind this, and I'll cover."_

_ "Tell them you didn't see anything, but only if they ask first." The girl rattled off quickly, before ducking behind the huge yellow bucket._

_ "—I swear I saw her…hey, you—uh, janitor guy…uh," a trio of awkwardly puffing scientists, flanked by at least two security guards, came down the hallway. The foremost among them and the most collected one by far attempted to subtly read his name tag, before continuing, "hey…Wheatley. Listen, we're looking for a…an asset, maybe you saw something come this way?"_

_ "What? No, no…I don't think so, I mean I might have seen something, but I don't really know what it is you're looking for, so I mean, a bit difficult isn't it? To remember without any sort of visual to go on, but I mean I can do my best to keep my eyes out, course if you could give me some sort of—"_

_ "The asset and all related details are classified." One of the other scientists cut in flatly, staring blandly from behind thick glasses._

_ "Ah, right," Wheatley twitched a little at the blunt reply, "well then, good luck. If you'll excuse me, I've got a hallway to—"_

_ "Set up a perimeter search for the surrounding offices. Check _every_ single cubicle and storage closet, she's got a talent for sneaking into tiny spaces." With that, the group hustled away, without so much as a "thank you" or "nice job there, Wheatley, let us know if you see anything, will ya?"_

_ "—mop." He finished lamely. "Rude, isn't it? Really, I mean it takes all of ten seconds to say a quick 'thank you' or, or—or something, but noooooo, nope, we can't bother that, thanks. We've got a schedule to keep, with our busy little…little," he trailed off as the little girl rose like some kind of silent swamp monster and stared at him from the other side of the yellow bucket. More than that, she was staring with an expression of what seemed almost like…awe?_

_ "That was _brilliant!_" She whispered. "I cannot _believe_ how you just chased them away like that! I wish I could do that, but of course, if I said anything like that, I'd probably get punished. Would you like to run away with me?"_

_ She said all of this so quickly that even Wheatley had trouble keeping it straight. "Run away where?"_

_ "Oh! That's the fun part! You can decide, if you'd like. I'd prefer somewhere sunny—I hear Tuscany's quite nice," she paused, "although…I'm not sure how far a trip that'd be, and honestly, you can pick if you want to." She offered magnanimously, but the gesture felt genuine coming from her, as opposed to say, Dave from the office down the hall. Wheatley had never really forgiven the fellow for walking over the floor when it was clearly labeled _wet_._

_ Wheatley's first instinct was to correct her; he opened his mouth, fully prepared to inform the little girl on why exactly it was highly doubtful that she'd go anywhere sunny dressed in _that_ color and just how much more unlikely it would be that she'd visit Tuscany. As far as he knew, the place was simply where his other aunt—the French one, if he remembered correctly—went during holiday, but she was an heiress, so she could jolly well just _live_ in a vineyard if she wanted. Furthermore, as far as he still knew, they didn't just let children buy plane tickets—or boat tickets, for that matter—so it seemed ridiculous to think that she could ever get on a…on a…_

_ A thought struck him with surprising certainty, like a crack of lightning but infinitely more helpful that being smacked with electricity from the heavens. _She knows already, _he thought, utterly nonplussed as to how he came to that conclusion. For all his weaknesses—resentment towards authority, a level of intelligence that most would consider slightly subpar, and a sense of self-preoccupation that was selfish at worst and distracted at best, to name a few—Wheatley recognized in rare moments he had a kind of superpower._

_ It was the oddest, craziest, and perhaps the most delusional thing he would ever say out loud (if he did ever say it out loud). In rare moments, he would look at someone, like this girl, this kid, and all of a sudden it felt like he could peer right inside their head. Perhaps it was the tilt of her head, or the creases near her eyes, or any number of things, but Wheatley got the sudden, abrupt sense that the little girl knew that what she was saying was a sham; she knew that as a test subject—because surely she was, if people were looking for her—she couldn't hope to see the sun down here, and to hope to see someplace like Tuscany was ludicrous in the extreme. Yet still, she seemed to cling to the silly idea like a nice daydream, happy to enjoy it until it dissolved into cold morning._

_ The girl smiled again, but it had a touch of sadness to it, as if she were bracing herself for some unpleasant task._

_ "Here, why don't you walk me back to my, er," her voice faded, as if searching for the right word, "…my…room." From the tone of her voice, she didn't seem to like this "room"._

_ "What about the whole, 'running away' plan? I mean, sure, I'd be happy to walk you back and all—absolutely my pleasure and all that—but are you sure you—"_

_ "Yes." She sounded as if she wanted to convince herself, but he didn't argue._

_ "Alright then, sure thing."_

_ They walked in silence for a bit, but the girl took his offered hand as they went along. At some point, the girl tugged him left, then right, then right again. Despite being blind, she seemed to have an _excellent_ sense of direction; something in direct contrast to himself. Also in contrast was how quiet the little girl was. Naturally, he chattered away the entire journey, as the girl hadn't indicated that his prattle was unpleasant. If anything, she seemed to be _actually listening_, nodding every once in a while to what he was saying or shaking her head as appropriate._

_ At last they reached the offices where her "room" was. They entered, though how Wheatley wasn't precisely sure, since there was a clearly locked keypad below the door handle, and immediately found themselves in a smallish chamber. It was plain, white, and spartan, with utilitarian bookshelves filled with dusty tomes, a white, narrow cot, and a porcelain toilet. Other than the bookshelves, it looked remarkably like a relaxation center, or at least, it looked like what Mark, the other janitor said the relaxation centers looked like. He'd been very quickly shooed away from the area, and he had regaled Wheatley with all the thrilling details afterwards._

_ "Thank God. _Where_ exactly have you been, young lady?" The voice was unpleasant and grating, so Wheatley was not terribly surprised by the appearance of the person that accompanied it._

_ The woman speaking was impeccably dressed, with her pencil skirt, fluttery blouse, and elegant scarf all neatly in their respective places. Sensibly low heels in a decidedly less sensible cherry red hue clicked efficiently on the white tiled floor as she came close. She snatched at Alex's arm, and the slightest expression of surprise came over her face as she realized it was already attached at the hand to Wheatley's rather lanky arm. He grinned sheepishly, which the woman did not appear to appreciate._

_ "And _who_ exactly, is this?" She asked crisply._

_ Wheatley opened his mouth, but the little girl beat him to it._

_ "Oh this is the janitor Mr. Wheatley. He was so nice to me when I got lost. He helped me get back, see?" The little girl spoke as if she were eight—which was probably how old she was, Wheatley didn't exactly have a great deal of experience with children—yet she had spoken with such intelligence before. Though he wasn't certain, he was fairly sure that his own name had been the longest word in her entire speech._

_ "Right." The woman flicked her eyes from Wheatley to the little girl and stared with such intensity that Wheatley felt uncomfortable just being in the same vicinity. "And _how_," she dragged out the word "how" with heavy emphasis, "would he have helped you?"_

_ "He was _very_ nice to me, so I knew I could trust him."_

_ There was a weighted silence, and Wheatley suddenly got the impression that the little girl and this woman were engaged in a war of sorts, subtle and secret, neither one daring a full frontal attack but rather engaged with all sorts of ambushes and counter-maneuvers._

_ After a long moment, the woman retreated. "Good, then." She tacked the second word on awkwardly, then went on. "Thank you, Mr., ah," she glanced at his nametag, "Mr. Wheatley. You may go."_

_ Wheatley exited the chamber quickly, wondering what he may or may not have gotten himself into. All the same, he had floors to mop in the meantime._

* * *

The dream dissolved, and Wheatley woke suddenly, surprised but happy. Alex's mention of her nickname for him—BFG, which naturally stood for Big Friendly Giant—had brought back a few scattered memories, but those were dull and vague on the whole. The dream was already fading a little, but the pleasant surprise at finding someone down _there_ who was polite and kind, right off the bat, without any sort of introduction to speak of—well, it was _wonderful._ The sheer kindness of it still struck him, however many years later now.

"_Dad?_" Ah, that's why he woke up. Sophie was whispering somewhere at the entrance to her parents' bedroom.

Careful not to wake Chell, though he knew enough by now to know that she was probably already awake, he slipped out of bed and met Sophie on the landing.

"Hey, Sophie, what you need?" Wheatley glanced at his daughter's face and quickly caught on. "Oh…ah, I see the…right."

Her eyes were glowing. Again.

Not too long ago, something like this had happened; Sophie simply woke up one morning with her eyes a bright, stratospheric, _glowing_ blue as if the nanites in her system had given her a backlight. Which, he supposed, they probably had. The tiny robots had made a number of changes to Sophie, both mentally and physically, with glowing eyes as only the last in a long list.

"Alright let's," he glanced back, saw the door to the bedroom nearly closed and dark beyond and began padding down the stairs, "c'mon let's head downstairs and deal with it down there, yeah?"


	17. Chapter Sixteen

AN: Hello all. Well, I delivered on my promise, so yeah, here's chapter sixteen. I understand the past couple of chapters have been a bit slow. Everything should start ramping up from here though. Feel free to review at your leisure, and let me know what you think! With that, read on!

* * *

Chapter Sixteen

"_Can_ you deal with something like this?" Sophie whispered miserably as they made their way into the kitchen.

"Eh," Wheatley waved his hands around as if it were no big deal, trying to reassure her, "don't you worry, your dad's got experience with this sort of thing. We'll sort it out sooner or later. C'mon then." He guided her to the table, and Sophie sat gingerly.

"Right," he paused, hovered over a kitchen chair nervously, then sat, "right, so…what triggered it, do ya think?"

"That's just it, I don't _know_. I was _asleep_!"

"So-oh-ohhhhh," Alex softly thumped into the room, yawning. Her bony knees thunked against the floor as she crawled into the kitchen space to spare her still-bandaged feet. After a good minute, her yawn at last subsided and she managed to get out, "Sophie, why are you awake?"

"Go back to sleep, Alex." Sophie sighed, rising from the table, and she gently took Alex's arm.

"No no, hang on, wait," Alex protested, and she held up her hands, forcing Sophie to look down at her particularly diminutive person before, "what's going on?"

"It's nothing." Sophie glanced at him, and Wheatley let out a long, _long_ sigh.

"Sophie's having some trouble with her—what'd you call it?"

"Technopathy?" Alex supplied, helpful as ever.

"_Dad_," Sophie put special emphasis on the word, letting him know on no uncertain terms that she wanted to discuss this in front of Alex, but he plowed on ahead.

"Hang on, Sophie, maybe she can help."

He and Sophie stared at each other for a long moment, and he was struck with the sudden thought that although Sophie's eyes were remarkably like his own, she had inherited her mother's iron-hard stare. A stare that was currently being used on himself to great effect. He winced a little, tugging at the collar of his pajama shirt.

Sophie looked away, clearly displeased. "Fine."

"Alright then." Alex said matter-of-factly, either oblivious or purposefully ignorant of the tension in the room. She took Sophie's hand and guided her slowly to a chair, then settled in herself. Folding her hands rather seriously for her age, she turned her head in Sophie's direction.

"What seems to be the problem?"

"It's really _nothing_." Sophie glanced at him on the last word. "You really should be resting, Alex. It'll probably be a big day tomorrow."

"Sophie, I like to help people. It's what I've always be meant to do."

The statement caught Wheatley off-guard, and a memory bubbled, _inches_ just out of reach. Something…something to do with helping people. Something about…about _Her_.

He couldn't imagine why _She_ and Alex could have anything to do with one another.

Sophie hesitated, but finally she said, "I've…well, I've got these nanites in my system, and they've been doing some weird stuff all around…but recently my eyes have started glowing whenever I get angry or…or when I purposely do something with them," she shifted, "the nanites, I mean. I'm not doing anything with my eyes that triggers it, is what I mean…"

Alex nodded with all the gravity of a lauded professor, opened her mouth, and said, "I believe they're trying to give you a backlight."

"What?" Wheatley and Sophie asked at the same time, both of them quickly sending worried glances toward the ceiling.

"A backlight." Alex repeated, unperturbed. "I think that _they_ think that you need to see better in the dark, so they've given you a backlight."

"Well, I don't need a backlight, so if they—if _you_ guys—could just _stop_, that would be great." Sophie held her arms aloft, looking every direction as if she could somehow spot the nanites hovering in midair and glare at them.

They were all silent for a beat. Sophie blinked a couple of times, the gentle blue glow of her eyes casting a clear, cold light on the surface of the kitchen table, and she scowled.

"Well, come on! Give me _something_!" She snapped, yelling, and this time both Alex and Wheatley winced.

"Sophie, please listen to me," Alex took Sophie's hand to emphasize her point, "you've got to find the melody _behind_ the machines."

"But what does that _mean_?" Sophie pulled away, her expression twisted in confusion and her voice frustrated.

"It's like finding the right frequency, right, Alex?" Wheatley ventured, continuing as the small girl nodded, "You've got to find the sort of order behind all the piddly little things going on."

"But _how_?" Sophie threw up her hands in exasperation. "I don't know how to do that!"

"Shh," Alex placed another hand on Sophie's arm placatingly. "Just listen."

"I don't hear any…" Sophie sucked in a breath.

"Do you hear them singing?" Alex asked.

"Not…no, not singing, exactly. But they're…they're trying to give me a backlight? Is _that_ what the whole glowing eyes thing is about?"

"I mean, I suppose that would make some sort of sense—not that you're a _core_ or anything, but I mean, they must think you'd need one to see in the dark, I suppose—" Wheatley offered.

"Ok then," mustering a strong, no-nonsense tone of voice, Sophie commanded, "turn off, then."

The blue light faded almost immediately, leaving the three of them in near darkness.

"Yes!" Alex cried at their success, at the same Sophie collapsed, and his heart jumped into his mouth.

"Sophie!" He quickly ran round to the other side of the table. Sophie was lying on the ground, her face pale. "You alright?"

"I think…I maybe…" she puffed, breathing hard, "I think I maybe…maybe turned them off…all the way."

"Wait, what does that mean?" Alex's head was poked over the edge of the table, staring sightlessly at them. Her brows were creased with worry. "Is it something bad?"

"Sophie's nanites keep her alive." Wheatley managed to say, propping his daughter up on the floor.

"Here, let me—" Alex slid out of her chair and started crawling towards them.

"Hang on, Alex. Not yet." He waved her off, too preoccupied to catch her swift change of expression and the sudden, deep hurt that flashed across her childish features.

"What's going on down—" Chell came padding in, silent and careful as a jungle cat in her usual fashion, and quickly rushed over. "The nanites?"

Wheatley nodded, at a loss for words.

"Mom, I don't know what—"

"Shh. Alright, alright," Chell began soothingly, though he swiftly recognized the hard look in her eyes. The kind that suggested the Aperture laboratories property destruction. "Here, let's get her to Garret, maybe he can—"

"Let me help!" Alex stomped over to them—er, well, about as well as she could manage on her knees—and she poked both him and Chell in the shoulders. "Just," she huffed, clearly angry, "just let me _help_, will you?"

Speechless, the pair of them stepped back a touch, letting Alex kneel next to Sophie.

"Alright little robots," Alex began, her voice hard, "let's turn back on again, okay?"

A touch of silence, and Sophie began to close her eyes sleepily.

"I said," Alex repeated, a little louder this time, "_Turn. On._"

More silence, and Chell moved to pick Sophie up. Wheatley held out a gentle hand to stop her, meeting her eyes with the calmest, most confident look he could muster.

Alex let out a ragged sigh. "Fine," she said, beginning to tremble just a little, "fine. If it's an admin override you want, then you'll get it."

Alex's eyes took on a strange blue glow, distinctly different from Sophie's. It was somehow warmer, more electric.

"Reactivate. Admin override, Alexandria alpha one."

Sophie gasped, and her eyes flickered blue once as they shot open, then faded to their natural color. She breathed in, deeply, and the color started to come back to her cheeks.

"Sophie!" Wheatley was absolutely certain he was hugging too tight, but he didn't much care, since he could feel Chell's strong arms around Sophie as well. Sophie was alright. She was _fine_.

Alex stood awkwardly off to the side, breathing somewhat hard. Had he thought to look up, he might have seen the fading electric blue glow of her eyes, and the thinnest of blue lines fading from her cheeks.

In the end, however, what any of them had been planning to do next didn't much matter, since a new voice interrupted their conversation, amidst the sound of machinery whirring to life.

_"Oh, thank _God_. I thought you'd leave me sitting in a corner like this forever. We really need to talk. And case you think I'm lying again, let me ask you a question: how attatched are you to this house? And everything around it in a five mile radius? Because unless we do something, we're _all_ going to blow up."_


	18. Chapter Seventeen

AN: Hello all. Right so, ah...this chapter is extra, Extra long (3k+ words), so there's that. Sorry about the brief hiatus; didn't really have much time to write, but things should be smoother going forward. I'll keep this short, but as usual, please feel free to comment/review at your leisure-I love hearing thoughts on the project! With that, read on!

* * *

Chapter Seventeen

If Caroline had feet, she would have been pacing feverishly. This…conundrum was of particular importance, taking precedence above every other thought in her mind. Crucial, yes, but irritating to no end, nonetheless.

There was of course, a solution—she was adept like that—she merely hadn't found it yet. At least, she hadn't found the variant of it that allowed everything to fall into place. All she was asking for was just a little perfection, was that so hard?

If she'd asked the maintenance nanobots their opinion, she was certain they would only offer some bland and unimaginative flattery. The very thought irked her, and she quashed a few of them on a mild impulse. The entire mainframe shuddered in a physical reaction that sent electronic ripples through her consciousness. She growled, but the modulation poorly translated the sound into an aggressive purring that rather undermined the effect.

She may have established her presence in the system, but the chassis itself was too attuned to its habitual user, and it fought her at every action. Unlike when the little moron took control—oh how _furious_ _She'd_ been—this takeover hadn't been done via core transfer, merely the takeover of a background system. Caroline took a precious moment to curse the long-dead scientists who had contributed to her difficulties before returning to her train of thought.

The simple fact was that she simply couldn't get around the issue without aid of the little project, currently on the surface. A round of careful restoration of the deleted files on the project had yielded no small measure of information; the Alexandria Project, like many things in Aperture, had been initiated for an entirely different purpose than the one for which it was eventually used. More than a billion dollars of funding, solely for the purpose of attempting to expand the capabilities of the human brain, specifically in relation to information processing and memory. The eventual goal had been the ability to download a literal library of books into the human consciousness with perfect comprehension and memory, thus the somewhat dramatic project name, the Alexandria Project.

But what little data Caroline had didn't give her any insight as to how or why the project would have the highest admin clearance in the facility. For testing's sake, why on earth would a _child_ be given the security clearance to access the company's most valuable and secretive projects, particularly in light of the strong sense of Black Mesa-related paranoia littered throughout the chassis' coding?

Caroline had a vague sort of idea, tied to the little that she knew of the project's final test, but for now, she was content to file the theory away. For the present, the only thing that concerned her was the issue of how to lure the little project back to the labs. Obviously she couldn't just force the project to return; her abilities made any attempt an inherently fruitless plan, and furthermore, the lunatic and moron were unlikely to give the project up without a fight.

However…if they could be convinced that the project truly was a horror, on par with _Her_ own ill-tempered self, perhaps Caroline could utilize their cooperation. She quickly brought up the data once again on the project, taking careful consideration of the video tapes that hadn't been totally corrupted. Several of them…oh yes, these would do _very_ nicely. Caroline needed a monster, and she had one, mostly definitely. It also wouldn't hurt to come at this from the other angle as well…

Caroline swiftly set the Alexandria Project tapes aside and brought up some select footage, far more recent.

"I am _not_ a moron!" The little I.D. core's voice boomed and echoed around the chamber, and Caroline tilted her faceplate upwards in mute satisfaction. A few mental gestures, and the best bits of footage were spliced neatly together in a terrifying montage. It was _glorious._

Of course, it _was_ a shame that the little project wouldn't be able to enjoy the full experience with crisp high definition—the part where the moron had viciously punched the elevator into the lower labs was _particularly_ enjoyable in that respect. Although, with her blindness in mind, this could be _very_ interesting. Caroline quickly made a few adjustments.

Still, even with all of these assets to work with, there was still the issue of getting all of them down here at once to even see them. Perhaps she would keep the videos as a plan B.

_[New Message Received: Exterior Signal Source]_

"**Hmm.**" Caroline hummed, the sound warping into something not unlike a nest of irate wasps. "**Now who could that be from?**"

_[User: String_Null]_

"**View message.**"

_[BeginMessage: Hey Abbi, it's Sophie again. Just checking in. What's going on down there? Are you okay?]_

"**Oh my. Isn't that interesting.**" Caroline quickly tracked the source of the message. It came from outside the labs, filtering through a smaller device before reaching the mainframe. She could only assume that the message had come from the surface, and given the name signed in the message, she could also assume that the lunatic's spawn had sent the message.

Now…_there_ was something she could work with. She'd seen firsthand, from the murky depths of GLaDOS's mainframe, that both the lunatic and the moron had an excessive attachment to their offspring, even going so far as to practically throw themselves in front of turret fire if they thought it would promote her wellbeing. Idiotic, true, but useful for her purposes.

Perhaps more importantly, she knew the little project had a particularly strong sense of responsibility, even for people who would sell her out without a second thought. And if she truly was with the lunatic and company, then perhaps "Sophie" could be used to manipulate the little project into falling into her own metaphorical grasp.

Now…all she needed was GLaDOS's little pet. The one that she'd thrown down not too long ago. It would be difficult to retrieve her, if she was still alive, but well worth it for the manipulative power it would lend her against the lunatic's spawn and, by extension, the little project herself. _Well_, she mused cheerily, _no time like the present._

* * *

Abbi barely had the faintest idea of who the blustering man coming over the megaphones every few minutes was, but she decided early on that she didn't like him.

_"Cave Johnson here, and welcome to Aperture Science…"_ The voice had made her jump with fright the first time she heard it. Now it had become a regular annoyance with its repetitive messages as Abbi scavenged various offices for usable technology.

Perhaps the most irritating part of trying to construct her own communication device was the fact that the vast majority of computers in the lower levels of the labs were barely advanced enough to be considered "computers". After a particularly long climb, she'd reached an office with a dozen trophies and plaques in a case, labeled with various dates from _ages _ago.

Abbi wasn't much of an expert, but from what she could tell, the 1950s were _not_ an ideal time if you wanted a computer of any quality. She'd only rifled through a few offices with same wood-paneled and carpeted décor before giving up on finding anything of use. Well, "nothing of use" implied that she wouldn't be needing any fancy, dead lamps or lovely wood furniture too heavy to lift in the near future, which to be honest, might be a slightly possible.

However, when she reached the offices with a distinctly garish change in décor, she hit the jackpot. Ignoring faded posters of men with puffy black halos of hair jumping for joy at the prospect of sixty…somethings, Abbi efficiently worked through the offices. Presumably the posters referenced some old currency, although Abbi was also considering that it could be sixty boats, like the one in the background. She wasn't entirely sure of the value of the currency unit, but on a surface level, she would assume that sixty boats would be more valuable in general.

Abbi herself had never really had much experience with large bodies of water, excluding of course, the lake where Sophie and her family had taken Abbi to go swimming. That day still haunted her, and she was fairly certain that the look on Sophie's face, and her parents' faces, would haunt Abbi for the rest of her life. She shoved the memory away, angry that it had made her nearly drop the electronics she was carrying.

_Alright,_ she mused, ticking items off her mental list as she surveyed her findings, gathered in one of the larger offices, _maybe just a few more…boost the signal as much as I can, don't think it can hurt, after all._ She set off across the catwalks, avoiding the paths with abrupt endings, the rusted steel sometimes shredded, sometimes cleanly snapped off. Without a portal gun, she was reduced to climbing from catwalk to catwalk, sometimes forgoing them altogether in favor of walking along the tops of dusty glass transportation tubes.

_"If you're hearing this, then congratulations! Your standing here means that you have made a glorious contribution to science…"_ Abbi did her best to ignore the boisterous voice, but it was nearly impossible.

_"Say goodbye Caroline. 'Goodbye, Caroline.'"_ Another voice joined the bossy one, but it was softer and sweeter, with just enough of a smile in it to make Abbi wonder if the woman had said her piece the way she had as a joke. Regardless, that sweet, gentle voice piqued her interest again, and Abbi paused. On a sudden impulse, she made a detour to the office room just to her right and found herself staring a large portrait. Though it drew her eyes every time she entered—she'd been in this particular office thrice now—she didn't let her attention linger on it long.

Abbi made a beeline, instead, for the unobtrusive data bank sitting in the corner. When she was poking around earlier, she'd activated it by accident and nearly jumped out of her skin when the bossy voice of one "Cave Johnson" came booming all around the office, far too loud. This time, she was careful to avoid the rather obvious red button on top as she shoved the clunky box away from the wall and began the tedious task of unplugging it.

Maybe it was foolish thought, but if Abbi's hunch was right, the recordings might just come in handy as a distraction. She wasn't precisely sure about what had happened to her mother; all she knew for sure was that something was wrong, be it that her mother had been pushed out of the system by a new entity or corrupted somehow. Much as she suspected the later was true, she desperately hoped that it wouldn't be so. As intelligent as she might be, Abbi still knew little of how her mother actually _worked_.

She snorted. There was that word again, that _hope_. Something that, excepting for a few rare moments in her life, she had despised with a passion rivaled only by her mother's pragmatic, logical way of thinking. If you wanted something, you went out and got it, preferably using science.

Cradling the rather dense databank, Abbi paused to grab a couple more components and quickly exited the office. She jumped a small gap between catwalks and began the journey back to the office she'd adopted as her temporary base of operations.

Reaching the room at last, she quickly set the databank down, glad to be free of its dense weight. She plopped down the floor, components in hand, and crossed her legs comfortably as she carefully plugged them into her already crowded array.

Now…all she needed was a message to send. Turning the whole thing on was a difficulty in and off itself, given the fact that she had plugged multiple devices into one another and each one appeared to have its own personal power switch. Seventeen switches later, the array began humming, and the various devices began to grow warm to the touch. Abbi prayed they wouldn't overheat and carefully opened the dialog text on the single, primitive screen attached to the whole thing.

_[Opening Signals, please wait]_

_ [Searching…]_

_ [Searching…]_

_ [Searching…]_

_ [Signal Found: fox_glove_1, connect y/n?]_

Abbi eagerly hit "y" on the dusty keyboard.

_[Connecting…]_

_ [Connecting…]_

_ [Connection Successful]_

"Yes!" Abbi pumped her fist in the air, something she had seen Blue and Orange do once in celebration, and she quickly began a message, typing away. Short, sweet—well, maybe not sweet, blunt honesty was more her concern at the moment.

Abbi leaned back on her haunches, chewing her lip in thought as she reread the message. She had a plan, true, if you called a dubious excuse for a distraction a plan. Still, it was better than nothing, and maybe Sophie would have some ideas. She quickly attatched the video recordings, praying that the attachment would hold.

With nothing else to say, she pressed a button, and a row of lights began flickering across the various components. The single computer display jittered, switching to an old-fashioned loading bar screen.

_[Message Sending…]_

_[0% complete]_

Abbi sighed. This was probably going to take awhile, especially since she'd attached the audio files. Still, it wasn't as if she was doing anything else at the moment.

Something clattered, metal against metal, and Abbi froze. She might be down in the depths of the labs, where everything was derelict and prone to losing pieces at any given time, but more often than not, when those pieces had fallen, they'd made a splashing sound in her experience. Not a clanging sound, like something metal repeatedly hitting the catwalks—

Abbi gripped the edge of an office desk, a sudden wave of fear washing over her. What if—no, that couldn't be it…unless…

She glanced at the computer. _35% complete_. Not terrible, but not nearly fast enough for her purposes. And if she was right…

Urgent robotic chirps echoed distantly, familiar and terrifying. Abbi rushed to the door of the office, catching sight of—sure enough—Blue and Orange at the exact same moment that they looked up and caught sight of her. They both stared for a brief moment, blinking with eyes and optics alike, in absolute silence.

Then the brash voice of Cave Johnson interrupted them all, spurring Abbi back into the office as Blue and Orange doubtless made their way up to where she was. Familiar as the lovable robots might be, Abbi had to assume that they were under "Caroline's" control, and thus that they were her enemies. The thought pained her more than she would admit, and she shoved it to the back of her mind.

_[45% Complete]_

Abbi groaned and quickly began moving furniture. If she could just blockade the door long enough to send the message, she could escape into one of the other offices, maybe even snag one of the robots' portal guns.

She had just stacked the second desk, with much grunting and puffing, when Blue's deeper-pitched chirps startled her. Just beyond the desks, through a crack between the doorframe and the furniture, she could just see a large blue optic, narrowed irritably at her. Abbi swallowed and quickly stuffed the crack with whatever junk she could find. Papers, clipboards—anything she could use to block the robots' view of the room she was in; she wasn't sure if the floor or walls of the office were portal-receptive surfaces, but she wasn't going to take the chance. If they couldn't aim a portal, they couldn't get in, right?

Orange's chirps, similarly annoyed, now sounded in tandem with Blue's right behind the desks, and the entire stack of furniture shook as one or both of them hit it with some force.

"Oh no ho ho-you don't!" Abbi half-laughed, albeit without humor, forcing the words out in frustration. She ran to the stack and braced her back against it, pushing hard with her legs. The next jolt _had_ to be both of them, because the force was enough to make her nearly lose her balance. She glanced at the computer screen.

_[69% Complete]_

"Come on! You've _got_ to be FLOPing kidding me."

Blue chirped angrily behind the desks. But his chirps sounded strangely…singular. Abbi glanced behind her just in time to see Orange ducking through the alternate doorway of the office.

"No!"

_[73% Complete]_

Orange tried to fire a portal, but the glowing yellow blast flashed once against the cheap, laminated flooring and didn't hold. Abbi snatched the opportunity and rammed into the slender robot with her shoulder. Orange squealed wildly, teetering on one leg. Abbi kicked, knocking it over, and grabbed for the portal gun.

Blue burst through the pile of furniture, triumphant for all of two seconds before one of the heavy desks fell on its leg, pinning it to the floor. Blue screeched, but Orange was busy tussling with Abbi on the floor.

"Come _on_! Give it up already!" Abbi yelled into the slender robot's optic. Orange tried to shrink back, but Abbi had the upper hand as she pinned it down on the floor and there was nowhere to go.

With a horrible screeching of metal and a generous amount of electronic screaming from Orange, Abbi wrenched the portal gun free. She was alarmed to notice that the device was in fact, _attached_, in place of a hand. Nevertheless, it didn't faze her for long, and she quickly fired two portals off; one landed some distance away on a lonely white surface far out the other door to the office. The other held firmly on the wall of the office itself.

Yelling wildly like some barbarian warioress, Abbi half-shoved, half-heaved Orange through the portal, quickly firing its twin on the office walls so that Orange was stuck some distance away.

One down. One to go.

Abbi hefted the portal gun and turned to find that Blue had mysteriously disappeared. The desks lay forlornly near the blocked doorway, carelessly overturned, and there was no sign of the little robot anywhere. She checked the other doorway, but still no robot.

_[97% Complete]_

Abbi sighed with relief. Just a few more seconds, then help would soon be on its w—

Abbi whirled, just as Blue came charging through the previously blocked doorway, wildly swinging its portal gun. Ducking, Abbi dodged the stocky robot's wild swings but went down as Orange reappeared—apparently rescued by Blue when Abbi wasn't looking—and pinned her down.

"No!" She cried, as Blue approached the communications array.

_[99% Complete]_

The display flickered, but Abbi could not see what it said before Blue's metal fist came down hard, smashing the main components beyond repair. The screen jittered with rainbow garbledy-goop before cutting out completely, leaving a dull black.

Another fist, merciless and swift, knocked her over the head, and everything went dark.


	19. Chapter Eighteen

AN: Hello all. Is this late...yes, yes it is. But it's still a Friday, so hey, at least we have that. Goodness this one is long (3k+ words again!), but I hope you like it! Lots of general family fluff in here, despite the situation. As per my usual request, please feel free to comment/review if you liked it or had other thoughts-I really do appreciate it! With that, read on!

* * *

Chapter Eighteen

"T-that's not true." Alex stammered. Everyone around her was silent in the wake of GLaDOS's words, but it was not a comfortable silence.

It was a tense, calculating, planning silence.

"She never said anything about blowing the labs up. That'd be foolish, since she'd get blown up too."

_"Maybe not." _GLaDOS admitted begrudgingly. _"But let me ask you this, then: if she hates you so much—and believe me, I _know_ she hates you since I was stuck in there with her—what do you think she'd be willing to do to get you? Do you think she'd be willing to take out everything in the area as long as she gets rid of _you_?"_

Her lengthy speech was uninterrupted by any of the group. Alex was stunned momentarily into silence. She hadn't realized just how much "Caroline" had…how much danger she had put her giant friend in.

But GLaDOS was a liar—Alex knew that intrinsically—and she also knew that the AI could not hide her willful untruths from someone closely attuned to her system. Someone like Alex, who had been judiciously monitoring her system during her little tirade.

"No. She wouldn't because…she can't get rid of me." Alex frowned, thoughtfully tapping GLaDOS's outer casing. "What aren't you telling us? I know you're leaving something out. Why can't she get rid of me?"

_"I am not! I'm telling the—"_

"—truth?" Alex resisted the urge to laugh bitterly and settled for a wan smile. "Trust me, I know when you're lying. And right now you're lying like a rug—not entirely sure why that's the turn of phrase, but I'm pretty sure that's the right saying for this situation—and I'm not going to let you do that. Not to them."

_"How _dare_ you? Fine, maybe we aren't going to blow up, but I _need _to get back in my body!"_ Alex could hear the anxious shifting of metal plates and the thudding footfalls of her giant friend as he took a few steps towards GLaDOS's core. _"Wait. Wait, wait, wait! Don't you _dare_ switch me off ag—"_

GLaDOS went quiet, and Alex felt her systems slowly wind down, humming along at a gentle pace as she entered sleep mode.

There was an awkward silence, full of too many questions.

She noticed, however, that her giant friend had come to rest his rather large hand on her shoulder, as a warm, comfortable weight. She knew he trusted her, and she him. He didn't believe _her_ lies.

But he did need to know what _was _true.

"Alex," Her giant friend began again, this time a note of gentle curiosity in his voice, "maybe now would be a good time to tell us why you were…why you were down in the labs, yeah? So we can figure out this mess, maybe…maybe figure out why she does want you?"

Alex swallowed, swallowed again, and shivered. She knew they deserved to know, and know the truth, but…

…just how _much_ truth?

* * *

Wheatley had fixed them all tea in piping hot, chipped mugs. Chell sat at the table, across from Alex, and gently reached over, brushing some of her long hair out of her face. They'd clipped it shorter just hours ago, and though it was now a much more manageable length, Alex had insisted on keeping her long bangs. It couldn't exactly hurt, since they couldn't possibly impede her vision any more than…than it was already. With her new hairdo and borrowed clothes, she almost seemed like an entirely different girl than the sad creature with bloody feet they'd found on top of Foxglove.

Alex flinched at the touch, gentle as it was, and Chell slowly retracted her hand, surprised at how stung she felt at Alex's reaction. She shouldn't have been surprised, given where Alex had come from, yet it still stung. Was this how Romy and Aaron had felt when she'd first arrived, all those years ago? Having to try to take care of a broken woman who lashed out in her sleep and injured the very people trying to help her? Someone who simply couldn't help it, despite the very real, sometimes physically harmful repercussions against very kind people.

"I'm sorry." Alex mumbled, quiet but audible. There it was again, with the manners. Even for all that her behavior was to be expected, Alex still seemed to take it upon herself to care for whatever living thing might _possibly_ be within hearing distance and apologize. Even if it barely make a lick of sense.

Wheatley settled himself in at the table, edging closer to Chell and wincing as the chair made a scraping noise with his movement. He was bouncing one of his legs, just under the table—something she had long ago recognized as a tell for his nervousness.

Although, considering Alex was _his_ friend, she couldn't imagine why he was nervous. Perhaps it was simply the mention of _that place_, since he still had the odd nightmare about it. She knew, because she had them too.

"Right! So, Alex, just start at the beginning, I suppose. Of course, you could possibly start in the middle—that has its advantages too in some way…maybe it'll, well—or you could just start at the beginning, since we've got a bit of time." Wheatley quickly rubbed a hand on the back of his neck—another nervous tic—and glanced at Sophie.

"Well, _we've_ got some time. You, young lady, ought to be heading off to bed, since it's a school night."

"Tch!" Sophie made an indignant noise in the back of her throat. "What? How can you expect me to concentrate on school when all _this_," she gestured wildly to Alex and the room in general, "is going on? And what about Abbi? Shouldn't I—"

"Sophie." Wheatley jumped in before Chell could say a word, taking a hard tone that was rare for him; even when forcing Sophie to eat her broccoli as a younger child, he rarely brought out what he called the 'head engineer' voice, preferring to coax obedience first if at all possible.

At the moment, however, the 'head engineer' voice was in full effect.

"We'll fill you in tomorrow, but for now, try to get some rest."

Chell could see Sophie struggling for a minute—she recognized the same stubborn if-the-emancipation-grid-is-broken-I'll-take-a-cube-with-me-if-I-darn-well-please look that had been on her own face often enough. But Sophie didn't buck, choosing instead to stomp off to her room.

Leaving the three of them alone.

Chell turned back to look at Alex, and Wheatley did the same, giving Chell's arm a gentle squeeze before he began.

"Right, so…?"

Alex took a deep breath. She looked pale.

"Are you sure you want to—"

"No. Yes." Alex burst out, though her voice remained relatively quiet, if hard. "You…you need to know the truth. I think…I think the truth is best."

"My full name is Alexandria—but I-I hate that name. It was…the-the name of my project, of _me_." She tucked her slender legs beneath her on the chair—given her rather small frame, there was ample room on the seat—and took another deep breath.

"I think the project was something about information. They wanted to be able to create a human brain—er, _my_ brain—that would be able to…I dunno, remember a lot of stuff. They made me read _piles_ of books and asked me lots of questions. Didn't matter though, because once they really got going, they got more interested in my telekinesis. They made me lift weights and things for _ages_ to make me stronger, but some days I was just so tired…and of course, the computers, nearly forgot about that bit. It was like computers and I, well—it was like we could have a conversation without having to use a bunch of coding and things."

"My earliest memories are there, I don't…I don't think I remember being anywhere but down there. After a couple years, some of the scientists and the engineers who were on the project stopped coming in…I-I don't know where they went. When I asked about them, all I ever heard was that they'd been 'transferred', whatever that means."

Chell shot Wheatley a quick look. Ever since her excursion into Test Shaft 09, she'd been well aware of the company's forced employee testing policy, but Wheatley probably was a better expert on the subject than even she was, given that he'd worked there once upon a time. Alex went on.

"Not long after Mr. Davis disappeared—he was one of the scientists, course—Miss Caroline visited me."

"Wait, wait, wait," Wheatley waved his hands for a second, interrupting, "you're saying that you met _the_ Caroline?"

"What was she like?" The question slipped out before Chell could stop it.

Alex turned towards her with a sort of surprise at hearing her speak, and, in a movement so minute that she very nearly missed it, Chell saw the girl shiver. She couldn't imagine why, since Alex was dressed rather snugly in some of Sophie's old things, which, although oversized in many cases, fit Alex well enough to keep her comfortably warm.

It made just as little sense when the slightest expression of worry flitted over Alex's childish features, almost as if it had been an unconscious reaction.

"She, well…" Alex paused, "she was a bit dull—but you have to understand that she was very…very sad, when I met her. I think something _horrible _must have happened. But she was kind, and…and I mean, she did a science experiment with me, so she wasn't too bad."

"But then she left, and…and I didn't see her again. Then, one day I went to sleep, and when I woke up, everyone…" Alex struggled, "…everyone I'd known was gone. Mr. Jorge, Mr. Davis, Miss Abernathy—"

"And then you escaped, right?"

Alex stopped in her tracks, her already grey-tinged face—nearly bleached of warm color from years in stasis—going pale.

"No-o…" she trailed off, her voice fading to silence awkwardly.

"What do you mean? Wasn't that when you woke up—what is it now—a day ago?" Wheatley asked.

Chell was wondering the same thing, but she feared she wasn't going to like the answer. If she knew anything for certain regarding Aperture Laboratories, it was that they were particularly fond of misapplying previously invented technology for the wildest purposes purely as a means for preserving their non-existent funds. If not that, then perhaps just for the science of I-wonder-what-would-happen-if-we-blank. In her experience, they generally considered either one of those options a higher priority than something mundane, say, like safety.

Even if that meant using a human being—a child—for their own purposes. The thought made her sick but didn't surprise her.

"When they woke me up, they-it was…they—" Alex seemed to struggle to find the right words, "—they were scared—not of me, I don't think—but everyone was very anxious about something. Some project coming up, I suppose. But it was so…so strange, because when I woke up, it was like I somehow knew all of that stuff already, even though they hadn't said anything."

Chell shivered now. She'd heard stories, of course—she knew as much as anyone in Eaden—about the mysterious monsters that had come and gone some many years ago—even before she'd walked out of the labs for the first time. Perhaps more importantly, she'd heard about what they could do—so eerily similar to what Alex was describing.

The ability to communicate purely through thought.

"What happened then?"

Alex blushed, but at least she didn't seem quite so frightened as much as embarrassed. "I told them to…to _shut up_." She ended in a whisper, flushing red with shame, as if being rude to the scientists was the worst of her problems. Although, perhaps that was her odd sort of way of dealing with the trauma, Chell mused; manners, after all, were much more easily corrected and easy to focus on than the horrifying reality of being a lab rat.

Much as Chell could relate to the ignominy of being observed and criticized for every action for every hour of your existence, this was unique vein of misery she was thankful to have missed out on. It was bad enough to be critically analyzed by a spiteful AI who toyed with you for the sheer entertainment of it, but worse still was the same treatment from a person who had the wasted possibility to be empathetic or compassionate towards their fellow human beings. It was crueler, somehow, to know a happier life rested within the power of someone who consciously made the choice to deny you the option. An AI had little such autonomy.

"It's just—I mean it was so loud, you know? All those voices…but they just sort of jumped, as if they'd seen a ghost, and they put me back to sleep again. After a while, they woke me up in another room—not a stasis pod—and they sat me down and told me that…that they…er, well," Alex shivered, a little inadvertently, and smiled weakly.

Wheatley rose for a minute, coming around to rest a gentle hand on Alex's shoulder—from here, his gangly frame dwarfed Alex's like a giraffe standing next to a young fawn—but Alex relaxed the slightest touch. When Wheatley tapped out a quick sequence of taps on her shoulder, her face curved in the gentlest semblance of a smile, and she returned the series of taps.

Chell opened her mouth, fully prepared to ask what had just happened, but Wheatley flashed her a quick glance that seemed to say that he'd explain later. For now, Alex still had to finish, and Chell could tell from the drooping of her eyelids that she was quickly losing steam.

"Right," she began again, if a bit shakily, "so…they told me that I had a job to do, and didn't I want to help a whole lot of people?" Alex's face became animated. "And I mean of _course_ I want to help! Helping people is—I mean it's what I'm meant to do, forever and always, and helping…helping makes me feel happy. So I said yes, of course I'd do my best to help…then they started putting me through all sorts of training. They were extra careful to focus on the computers, and they told me to connect to them for as long as I possibly could."

"After a while—gosh, I dunno, maybe a year or something—they took me for a walk and we went into this big 'ol room, and it was so, _so_ cold in there. I heard a lady screaming all of a sudden, but nobody else was noticing and the screaming got louder and _louder_…"

Alex paused, wincing. "I asked about the screaming, but they said something about, 'not yet anyways', and the scientist I asked laughed at me. I didn't think that was very nice, but the screaming stopped all of a sudden, so I thought maybe I was imagining it."

"Anyways, they plugged me in, with—"Alex paused to reach around and touch the back of her neck in an eerily familiar motion, nodded to herself, and went on, "—with this." She turned, giving them full view of the back of her neck, where, previously hidden by hair, a tiny metal port lay embedded in the warm skin.

It was so small, you might have missed it, had you not been looking. Or had you not been already familiar with the sight.

Wheatley flinched at the sight of the port, but he tried to cover with a nervous smile—though Alex couldn't have seen either motion—and he rubbed his own neck in sympathy.

"Ah yeah, I remember that. Neural inter-whatsit, you called it."

"Yeah, something like that." Alex frowned. "It was there when I first woke up—not literal first time, second time, of course—and it was so awfully sore. I-I hated it. I still do." Alex sounded uncharacteristically bitter for the barest second, then quickly tried to smile again, as if she didn't consider it proper behavior to be displeased with something.

"Why did they plug you in? What was…?" Chell trailed off, and Alex swallowed anxiously.

"It was a, it was—oh, but it's so hard to describe!" Alex sighed, making an exasperated little _chuff_ noise through her nose. "It was _big_, is the best way I can put it. So, _so_ big—and all these little white-hot bits of things flashing through the deep coldness of it all. But then all of that didn't matter because they said something about 'waking _her_ up' and then everything was this burning hot _anger_—" Alex broke off, looking close to tears.

"I'd never—" she choked, "—I couldn't imagine hating anybody that much—I'd never understood how anybody could be that angry but, b-but…then I understood. It was _horrible_. But I understood."

Chell had been edging away from the table in mute, fascinated terror for the last few minutes. Alex's voice seemed to have the same simultaneous magnetic draw and gross repulsion as a bad traffic accident as she went on and on.

It was becoming abundantly clear to her just _what _Alex had been plugged into—_Her_—but as to why, Chell still hadn't the foggiest. The simple understanding of Alex being effectively trapped within the waspish AI's system and forced to stew in the simmering hatred of her nature seemed to discourage further thought on the subject.

But she had to ask.

"Why?"

"She wanted to kill _everybody_, and they couldn't figure out why. Until they could, t-they needed someone to calm her down, and…and if it came to it, somebody to shut her down. T-that's why they gave me the admin code. They told me not to use it unless it was an emergency, b-but—" Alex broke off, unable to continue for the tears streaming down her face.

Chell shoved her chair away from the table in a sudden scraping noise, too angry for words. Once again, she shouldn't have been surprised—_couldn't possibly _be surprised by Aperture again—but all the same she was angry. Imagine being so simultaneously desperate and low to stoop to forcing a literal child to cure the monster you'd created.

But the tale had been told. It was over, and Wheatley had picked Alex up, resting her weary, weepy head on his shoulder and rubbing soothing circles into her back. He made various gentle shushing noises, rocking her side to side as sobs racked her slender frame. Eventually, they subsided to gentle sniffling.

"It's alright, Alex. It's alright. You did good. I'm so _proud _of you, luv, I can't even tell you. You did so good, now, why don't you take a quick nap, yeah? Just have a nice little sleep, alright?"

Wheatley's voice was like a metronome, rocking back and forth with a steady, predictable sort of rhythm. It was effectively sleep-inducing, and Alex nodded sleepily from his shoulder. Chell watched her lids gently droop closed with exhaustion.

After a quick minute, and after he was certain she was asleep, Wheatley glanced up, and he and Chell shared a look. After nearly eighteen years together, that single look communicated more than the average bystander might have suspected, had they been privy to such an intimate scene. Between their shared gazes was a question, loud and clear.

What were they going to do?


	20. Chapter Nineteen

AN: Hello all. Yes...I know I didn't upload on Friday as promised. Sorry. Been a nutty week last week, but here's chapter nineteen. Since the rest of the story is pretty much outlined, these next few chapters should be along shortly, and ideally, chapter twenty will be up Friday. With my current outline, that means it won't be long before we hit chapter 25 (the final one!). Thanks to everyone currently following the story and I hope you enjoy this chapter. As usual, feel free to leave a comment/review and let me know your thoughts. With that, read on!

* * *

Chapter Nineteen

They'd been lying in bed for at least a half-hour, unable to sleep.

"Something's bothering you, luv, I can tell."

She was silent for a moment, then asked, "How much do you remember about Alex's project?"

He tilted his gaze towards the ceiling thoughtfully before meeting her gaze again. "Not…not everything. But more and more as time goes on. I think Alex triggered more memories, like a, like a key in a lock—it's like it was all there, just sort of, sort of tucked away where I couldn't see it." He bit his lip, then continued in a rush—

"And I mean it _sounds crazy_, making friends with a kid down there—kinda just a bit of luck we met at all—but of everyone and anyone I'd met down there, 'cept you, of course, she was something _good_. This-this kid who just looked at you and smiled. I mean, we'd met once, but when I saw her a second time, I mean she remembered my name!" He smiled at that.

"And…and I didn't know at the time, but when we'd met, she'd been trying to escape—but-but she didn't, you see, she stayed. And she told me…she told me once that she didn't mind being down there so long as she could talk to me. To _me_! And I was still a janitor then!"

"You were a janitor?"

Wheatly sat bolt upright, dragging the blanket with him. "Oh right! Yeah, it was, i-it was my aunt, my aunt worked at the company, and she job me a job as a…a janitor." A look of realization dawned on Wheatley's angular face, and for the briefest moment, he frowned. "Really not much of a favor, now that I think of it—still, not all bad, not all bad, I mean I met Alex, so not _all_ bad…plus, I mean, I eventually got promoted, and then I met you, so…"

"Wheatley." He stilled at her serious use of his name. "Why did they plug her in?"

His face screwed up a clear expression of disgust.

"Not exa-actly sure, but it had something to do with the rather obvious problem that _She'd_ try to kill 'em every time they turned Her on for so much as a second. Plugging Alex in was sort of a…sort of a stall while they figured something else out. But then she ended up working so well that they, they—" He broke off, his brow furrowing. "Actually I don't remember what happened after they plugged her in the one time I _was_ there, because, er…well, that was when I tried to talk to you and, er…" He trailed off, but he didn't need to finish. She understood.

He didn't know what happened next because he'd been taken.

From his own mouth, he'd told her that the very first memory he could properly recall was being woken up as a core for the first time. They wouldn't have needed cores unless Alex had failed, so something had to have happened in between the time when he'd been human the first time and when he'd been woken up as a core for the first time.

Something that only Alex would be able to tell them.

"Almost poetic, really—sad, of course—but they tried to use her like a conscience. _She_ wasn't human enough, and they had to train Alex to be _robot_ enough, in a way, so that they could fix it. Rather on-brand of them, isn't it? Never could get the hang of extremes."

_A conscience_. Something sparked at the word—some distant memory of a cold, sterile room far, _far_ beneath this house—but Chell couldn't place it. Something close and yet just out of reach; she couldn't figure out how it was connected. It frustrated her, but at least she could satisfy her other curiosity.

"What was that thing you did with Alex just now?" She asked.

Wheatley grinned briefly, then gently reached over to tap her arm in the same rhythm: four short taps, a short, a short-long-short, then a final short.

"Alex had to read all these sorts of books, you know like, erm, like well…I dunno, Machiavelli or something I suppose—not much of a kid-friendly sort of repertoire down there, to be honest. Not really much of a _selection_, if you get what I'm saying…still, not terrible, not terrible. Certainly very, ah, very clever sort of library in there.

"Point is, she found a bit of a code of sorts in one of those books, and she taught me some of it. Don't remember a bit, 'cept of course _that_ little bit. Spells out a word, if I remember correctly."

Chell had been sitting up to talk, but now she leaned back, letting her muscles relax. "What was it?"

"Hmm?" Wheatley sounded sleepier than he'd been mere moments ago.

"What was the word?"

"Oh, right. Yes…I think it was 'here'. Course, you have to understand she was blind…couldn't-couldn't see, of course…think she liked being able to talk," he yawned, "without actually having to talk…"

He was sound asleep, softly snoring.

* * *

_"Don't worry, Alex, I'm not going to get you."_

_ Alex nodded, but her eyes stayed tightly scrunched shut. She could feel the cold steel of the scissor blade against her skin as Chell maneuvered around her face, clipping the hair around her forehead into neat bangs. She could hear the neat _shiiick_ as thousands of hairs were cut, severed from their homes, and fell in teasing, itchy clumps. Yet she didn't dare move, for fear that the razor-sharp blades would miss their mark and slice her skin instead._

_ "All right. Should be a bit more manageable."_

_ Alex tentatively reached up and felt the short strands, suddenly aware of just how _light _her scalp felt. Suddenly able for the first time, she ran her fingers through her scalp, sighing with delight at the lovely feeling. The sudden freedom pleased her and she grinned._

_ But then a hard, tight-squeezing hand gripped her arm. The scene shifted with an alarming speed as everything around her suddenly took on a colder, more sterile feeling—_

_ The hand was still tight, but not a comforting snugness; no, this was a grip devoid of any warmth that Alex could feel, and a strange collection of shapes were just above her, in a hue that she couldn't describe…this was sight, she was somehow certain of it. She wasn't sure how she was seeing or even what she was seeing. All she knew was that there was a glow of light behind her and the grip was suddenly gone and she was falling and falling—_

_ Everything was fire and flames and burning and horrible, _horrible_ pain…and then everything had gone back to black and the void that she now knew was a void without the shapes and the colors… The fire was gone but now it was so much worse because there was water surrounding her, crushing her, _drowning _her before the blackness and silence made it all go away—_

* * *

Alex woke up to find her arms still shaking. She lay there, silently rubbing down the hairs standing on end all down her arms and listening to Sophie's gentle breathing. It was so even, Alex was certain she had to be asleep, and Alex carefully hovered to the door, too uncertain of walking on her knees to risk waking Sophie.

Once outside Sophie's room, Alex carefully navigated her way to the kitchen table where she'd all but bared her soul—if she indeed found herself in possession of one after everything that'd been done to her—hours before. Could it only have been a few hours? The little clock far away upstairs, gently humming away on a trickle of electricity, certainly seemed to think so.

Alex folded her hands, summoning every bit of concentration she could muster, and reached for the mystery dream already fading from her mind. It was connected to some distant memory—she was certain of that. She'd met this woman, this Chell, before, and even if her waking mind did not remember it, her subconscious intuition certainly did. It practically bared its teeth every time the woman approached and snarled a vicious warning in Alex's gut, something along the lines of "GET AWAY".

But Wheatley, her giant friend, her best and only friend, trusted this woman. Even if Alex wasn't able to sense the innermost flutterings and shufflings of the mind, the emotional bond he shared with Chell was palpable enough for anyone to see. Well, not _see_, per se—but the point stood. There were things that had happened that Alex didn't understand, perhaps would never understand, and while she didn't harbor envy (at least not _that much _envy) for the connection this near stranger shared with her friendly giant, Alex worried all the same. What if he was wrong to trust—

A great big something rushed into her mind with all the force of a freight train (she hadn't ever seen one, but the metaphor still applied, she thought). A warm rush, thick with information and lush with a chorus of voices swirled around her mind like a small eddy in a stream. The trickle dried up within seconds, leaving only vaguely warm echoes.

Alex breathed in, trying to understand what had happened when another rush hit her. This time, it was so, _so_ much bigger—a great big universe of sound and flashing warmth that was benign and yet so ominously familiar—

_[Incoming message for user_null]_

_ What are you?_ Alex thought as forcefully as she could, sending the message spiraling towards the mysterious signal. There was a brief silence, then—

_[Welcome admin:alexandria-alpha-one]_

_[Query: admin override?]_

_ Why would I want an admin override?_

A pause. _[Query: view message?]_

_Ohhhhhhh._ Alex made a little _puff_ noise with her lips, finally understanding. The message from this, this _thing_, this entity wasn't for her. It was for "user_null", whoever that might be, and to access it she needed to exert her override authority. Alex sighed. _Second time today._ But she did it. Must be another Aperture device if it recognized her user authority. Too late the thought occurred that perhaps this was a terrible idea—

_[Processing command…]_

_ [Begin message: Hey Sophie. GLaDOS is acting kind of weird. Any chance you could come down to talk? Abbigail.]_

Alex's blood ran cold. There was somebody still down there, down there with Caroline but not _actually_ Caroline. "Abbigail" was down there with a monster, and if her message was any sort of indication, she might not even know—

It might even already be too late.

Alex caught the sudden sound of feet shuffling along the floor and cringed. After everything that'd happened, she didn't really feel like walking the whole house up again. Granted, it hadn't been her fault that Sophie had woken up, then Wheatley, then Chell…

It was Sophie. The nanites in her system greeted Alex in a politely deferential sort of way before returning to their scheduled tasks, which apparently included making Sophie's eyes glow. Again.

"Alex." Sophie seemed to have suddenly noticed her. Her voice carried a touch of surprise. "What are you doing up again?"

"Is there—" Alex halted mid-question, unsure of how to phrase it, "—is there a-a like a something…a something that's…like a radio? Or something else nearby? Something with a strong signal?"

"Are you talking about Foxglove?"

"What's that?" There was a shifting noise, and Alex heard Sophie come nearer.

"It's the tower you were on top of when we first found you. It boosts the wifi signal in Eaden…and the radio…_and_ the tv connection—"

"Can it receive messages?"

A pause.

"Why do you ask?"

Alex shifted, uneasy. "Because it said there was a message for somebody—'user_null' it said—and I wasn't sure who that was but I saw it and then—"

"What did it say?"

"I think there's somebody in trouble down there."

Strong hands gripped Alex's arms rather suddenly.

"Alex, what did the message say _exactly_?"

Alex rattled off the message.

Sophie let go of Alex's arms, and Alex could feel her fear gently bubbling to the surface of her consciousness. Pushing the unwanted mental sensation away, Alex reached for Sophie's hand and squeezed tight.

"Something is definitely wrong."


	21. Chapter Twenty

AN: Hello all. Is this late? Yeah, but I'm pretty sure I get at least a little slack for updating twice in a week (not that anybody's actually complained :). Pretty sure this is the longest chapter I've written thus far (nearly 4k words), but I did get a comment saying longer chapters are good so...yay! Don't know why I said this was chapter twenty-one on the summary, but that chapter's coming too, eventually. Hope you enjoy and please feel free to let me know your thoughts in a comment/review! With that, read on!

* * *

Chapter Twenty

GLaDOS came back online to find her optic uncomfortably close to the face of the lunatic's spawn.

Barely suppressing the growl threatening to trickle from Her vocal processor, She managed to ask with some measure of civility, _"How long have I been out?"_

"Relax." The younger girl waved off Her comment as if it were of minimal importance and picked Her up. "You've only been off for a couple of hours."

They exited the house, and entered a hazy white landscape, once again snowing. The little idiot was outside as well, standing idly. The air, thick with flurries, buffeted her tiny frame, but her expression was set firmly in a determined frown.

"Let's go."

_"Go where."_ She asked the question without the slightest indication that it had been anything short of an order. _"What is going on?"_ She couldn't help dropping the stern tone then; Her curiosity had been thoroughly piqued and she couldn't help but stare at the two of them. They didn't answer.

They set off through the blurry white landscape at a quick pace, thanks in no small part to the little project's floating trick. Within minutes they had arrived at the tower cannibalized from Her own brutally slain chassis. They passed it, headed towards the tiny grey speck far beyond it in the distance, barely visible in the early morning light.

_"Oh thank God. I'm assuming, of course, that you are exercising the sense both your parents lack by bringing my back to my body. A good idea, by the way, since otherwise you might have a serious lack of self-preservation indicating brain d—"_

"Shut up." The lunatic's spawn snapped, and She followed the command, stunned for the briefest of moments. "You're lucky we're even bringing you down there, since my parents probably won't."

_"I know that, which is why I took the time to compliment you on it. I hope you were listening too, because I'm not going to repeat myself. And why are you so grumpy anyway? _She's_ doing all the work,"_ She flicked her optic—and a handrail, for good measure—in the little project's direction, _"I can't imagine what you have to complain about…"_

The lunatic's spawn looked on the verge of shouting again, but the little project hovered closer and laid the slightest of hands on her shoulder. The older girl stilled, then let out a tired puff that crystallized in the frigid air.

The little project answered instead. "Abbigail—I'm not sure you know who that is but I have a hunch you do—she's in trouble."

_"Abbigail?"_

Of all the things She would have expected—correction, _should_ have expected—Abbigail's possible plight in all this mess honestly hadn't occurred to Her. She was struck with a sudden and most unwelcome feeling that pressed in on her consciousness like a dead weight, heavy and bitter. It was almost—no—but it was almost as if she was feeling guilty about—

_Wait. Guilt?_

An emotional response wasn't like Her. It was like, well…it was like Caroline. But that was impossible. Patently ridiculous and very, _very_ impossible, unless—

Well, unless she was still there, inside Her head. But if She ran with that scenario—just for experimental purposes—then it begged the question of what on earth was squatting in her body? What was it that so unceremoniously crammed her collective consciousness into an insultingly small sphere of metal and wires?

They had arrived at the shed, which She found, having seen it twice now, rather unimpressive. Certainly one of the many items on a growing list of things to do the second she was back in her chassis. Optimally, she would have preferred to get started the _picosecond_ she was back, but she did have to allow for the system purging of Caroline and perhaps dealing with the mild dilemma that was the little project. That shed would simply have to be dealt with at some point. Frankly, it was embarrassing, and if there was one good thing to emerge from all of this, it would be the fact that She was now aware of just how _shabby_ that metal shed was. It was a poor excuse for an entrance to the laboratories—correction, it was a poor excuse for an entrance to a garbage heap, although perhaps it might have suited some of the lunatic's associates.

The lunatic's spawn put Her down and began to pace in front of the door. The little project sat on the concrete stoop that surrounded the miniscule building and put her head in her hands next to Her. Well, She assumed those floppy bunches of cloth cradling her chin concealed hands; the coat the little project wore was ill-fitting and crudely draped around her slender frame, obviously better suited to a larger specimen than the girl herself.

"Okay, so we need _some_ kind of plan going in there. We don't know where Abbigail is the facility, and it's a big place, so we'll have to locate her somehow, then figure out how to get her back up to the surface with us."

_"Or, you could utilize some of the common sense I so generously complimented you on having earlier and simply plug me back in so that _I_ can locate her and get rid of Caroline."_

Both girls turned towards Her, though the project didn't make direct eye contact (not that She expected it particularly, she had come to expect that kind of rude behavior from the girl). The little project was frowning deeply, the expression drawing harsh lines around her mouth and eyes. The lunatic's spawn had a similar expression on her own face, almost as if they didn't think that She could—

_"Is there some previous discussion you would like to share with me? Why are you looking at me like that?"_

"Well…" the little project started, paused, then went on, "I don't know if you could handle her."

_"Handle her? Seriously? Who do you think I am? That-that _thing_ is in _my_ mainframe, in _my_ chassis. If you think I'm just going to let her stay there—"_

"Nobody said anything about _letting _her stay there, but just think for a minute; what happened last time?"

She readied her vocal processor, warming up a good number of cutting replies, but she stopped. She would gladly throw Herself into an emergency intelligence incinerator before she would ever admit it, but the little project had a point. She hadn't been able to overpower Caroline's deep-rooted influence over the system the first time—and She'd been plugged in that time. Caroline, or whatever she really was, had wormed her way around Her defenses and coding even before she was fully in charge of the system, so what chance did She have at besting her?

She hadn't said anything, but the little project nodded as if She had.

"See? Sophie's right, we need a plan." She folded her little hands seriously. "We can't rush in blind."

_"There seems very little chance of that, since I see only one blind person around here."_

"Look," Sophie took one of Her handles and forced Her to meet the older girl's gaze, "I know you want to get down there as badly as we do. Not just that, but I'm pretty sure we both also want to rescue Abbi, which means for right now, we're on the same team."

_"I wouldn't have said it so candidly but…yes. Fine. We're on the same team. The point is, we _need _to get back down there before she does any more damage."_

"Caroline?" The lunatic's spawn supplied.

GLaDOS nearly replied, but the little project beat Her to it.

"That's _not_ Caroline." The little project shook her head emphatically. "I promise, that's not her. This _thing_ is someone or something else."

_"Much as I hate to agree with her, she's right. That thing isn't Caroline. I don't know _what_ she, or rather _it_ is, but believe me when I say I'm going to be purging every trace of it from my systems—twice—as soon as I get back."_

She meant every word, for once. Whatever deranged thing currently enjoying use of Her chassis and authority in the laboratories below them was going to _thoroughly_ regret ever putting Her in a core. She would make absolutely sure of it. If anything, it would be rather enjoyable to have someone to take Her grievances out on again, seeing as both the lunatic and the moron had escaped their just deserts. Of course, she considered Herself mature enough to overlook it.

For the moment.

"Could it be a virus? I mean, you _are _a computer—you can get viruses, right?" The lunatic's spawn offered, her tone clearly uneasy at asking such a specific question of Her. As she should be.

_"Yes, actually, I can. I believe I have you and your little…friend to thank for that."_

"They kidnapped my parents! I didn't have a choice!"

_"Honestly, you probably would be better off without them. After all, your mother was an orphan and look how she turned out. Oh wait, maybe I got that confused. Are unwarranted property destruction and psychotic murder attempts widely acknowledged as career choices for humans? If it is, then she's certainly been very successful."_

"Don't you dare—!"

"Okay!" The little project quickly jumped up from her spot and barely held back the lunatic's spawn from grabbing Her by the handles and hurling her into the snow.

GLaDOS wouldn't have dared admit it out loud, but in that fraction of a second of anger before the little project held her back, the lunatic's spawn glared with the same fiery hatred that She'd seen countless times behind the safety of a ruby-eyed camera lens. It was the look that accompanied exploded walls and broken equipment, ghastly core transfers and painful, fiery death.

It was the look of complete and utter determination, at its plainest and simplest. And it unnerved Her more than she'd care to admit.

"Why don't we take a deep breath and just think this through, okay? Yeah? Sophie, does that sound good?"

The older girl was breathing hard, but she tore her gaze away from GLaDOS long enough to look at the little project. After a long minute, she nodded jerkily and stepped back.

"Now," she was talking to Her, now, "last time I was in there, in uh, the central chamber, something was different. That wasn't the same place I was…I w-was plugged in."

_"I don't know what to tell you."_ She growled, her voice, barely civil again. Honestly, Caroline was probably wrecking havoc down there, destroying _Her_ facility and putting Abbigail in danger all the while, and all the little _idiot_ could do was ask her about…the chamber…

Unless.

She eyed the younger girl with a new and critical eye. _"When were you a project in the labs? No, wait, what was it she said? You were the whole reason for the cores…so you would have been defunct _before _they started using them."_

She hesitated, but nodded, her white hair bouncing with the movement.

_"So then you would have been in the central AI chamber while they were working on the—oh my G—"_

"What? What is it?"

_"The alternate chassis. Something happened to the first one, so they built a new one. The old one was hidden away in the labs somewhere."_

"Can we find it?"

"If we can, it might still have the authority to access the mainframe, and—"

_"—and purge Caroline from there."_

The lunatic's spawn grinned. "This might actually work."

* * *

They'd been walking for some time. Of course, to say _She_ walked was a very loose way of putting it; the two girls had alternated carrying Her core every half hour or so, mostly because the little project had to carry herself as well as Her core. Her little feet were still tightly bandaged, and though she didn't make a peep when she put her weight on them, She could see her face twitch ever so slightly.

With the little project's aid, they'd hacked into the elevator controls and ordered it down into the enrichment center on Her suggestion. She'd repaired much of the facility after the first attempted murder, but the containment crates themselves could not be reconstructed to Her knowledge. In any case, she hadn't felt like putting in the time and energy to rattling ten thousand or so skeletons out of their respective coffins. That was supposing she even could, given that many of the crates were thick with vegetation richly fed by thousands of late test subjects and former employees.

Then again, the vegetation was the whole point of why they sneaked through this specific area of the labs; in order to take Caroline by surprise, they needed to traverse as much of the facility as they could undetected. By now, the wild vines and creeping tubers had grown so lush around the area that it was difficult for the scanners and cameras to work properly. She'd counted at least four cameras by now that had simply popped off the wall, choked out of their mounts by the relentless squeeze of the thriving climber vines.

The lunatic's spawn gasped. GLaDOS flicked her golden optic around and caught sight of a now-clean skeleton, brown with age, curled against rotted sheets of an ancient bed. To the best of her estimation, the skeletal remains were picked clean of skin and muscle and curled round with delicate little vines—nothing particularly disturbing about that. She glanced at the grimy, peeling stickers on the outside of the crate, beyond the rusted hole that served to give them such a view. Of the many boxes listed to categorize the relaxation center crates, three were checked: adult, male, and staff. Further reason not to grieve too deeply about the fate of whoever he'd been, likely a neck-bearded old engineer not worth the time.

"Sophie, are…are you alright?" The little project asked. Her brow was furrowed, with a slight upwards tilt toward the center. Her facial recognition software seemed to interpret this vaguely as empathetic. _Pathetic indeed._

"I just," the lunatic's spawn seemed to have difficulty speaking, "I-I…mom and dad told me about their…their story down here. And dad said he was in charge of a relaxation center—like this one. He said he'd…he didn't know…" she trailed off, then began waving her arm emphatically, leaving GLaDOS to dangle helplessly from one handle.

"There are ten _thousand_ people in here and all of them had lives, and they-they—" She broke off again, taking a seat. GLaDOS rolled to the side as the girl held her head in her hands.

_"Oh, don't mind me. I'll just sit here. On the floor. But take your time."_

"Oh hush!" The little project chastised Her briefly, then hugged the older girl. "Sophie…people make mistakes. I think…I-I think your dad and my friend…they're a different person from who he was as a-a—oh what's it called—a core."

A pause.

"I really hope you're right. I really, _really _hope so."

"It's true, Sophie." The little project insisted. "I promise. That's why it was so easy to be friends, he—he had a good heart."

The lunatic's spawn nodded and took a deep breath. "You're right, you're right. Let's keep going."

_"Finally."_

They rose again, the little project hovering an inch or two above the ground while the lunatic's spawn grabbed Her handles and they set out.

After at least half a mile of rows and rows of stacked relaxation center crates, they came to a rounded door, which cycled green with a pneumatic hiss at their approach. They walked through.

Beyond it, the clean lines of neat, well-constructed test chambers loomed over the catwalk upon which they stood, disappearing into the misty blue shadows of the surrounding space. If She'd been restricted to the same organic air-circulation systems that both of the girls shared, She might have sighed with relief. As it was, she settled for humming a few bars of a self-constructed symphony.

"Here, I'll take a turn." She felt Herself moving from the arms of the lunatic's spawn to those of the little project.

They continued on across the catwalk spanning the sheer drop. She chanced a quick glance below, but her optic couldn't follow to the bottom where the razor straight lines of test chambers faded into darkness. At the other end of the catwalk, they found themselves in a dark hallway. Passing by, She caught sight of an old elevator, ancient but untouched at the end of a dead-end hallway that was otherwise chaotic. Papers, yellowed with age, were strewn across the floor indiscriminately, their typed words faded past legibility.

The little project stopped, hovering just an inch or two off the ground. She was hesitating there, seemingly unaware that the lunatic's spawn had gone on a few steps ahead.

"Alex? Come on, we've got to get to that chamber."

"Sophie…" The little project set Her down, sighing.

_"Hey. Pick me back up _right now—_"_

"Sophie, please don't—don't hate me."

"Why would I—unh!" The lunatic's spawn grunted in surprise as she was lifted from the floor, her arms waving wildly as she tried desperately to find her balance without the aid of gravity. "What are you doing?"

From her position on the floor, all GLaDOS could see was the bottom of the little project's chin from below. Something liquid trickled to the edge, then dripped, soaking into the stiff material of her coat. The lunatic's spawn began yelling as she was helplessly floated into the elevator and the glass door slid shut, the old metal protesting.

"Alex, please! Get me out of here, right now!"

"Sophie," the little project smeared the back of her hand across her face, "I-I'm sorry, but if Caroline knows about your nanites, she'll probably kill you."

"Let me _out_!"

The little project went on calmly, though she appeared to have something of a breathing problem, as her voice hitched, "You're my friend now too, Sophie. I can't let anything happen to you. Besides," her head ducked and GLaDOS could see her tightly pressed lips, her eyes scrunched shut, "this is my fault anyways."

"I woke up the monster. It's my job to make sure she goes back to sleep."

"Alex," the lunatic's spawn was begging now, "please don't do this."

There was remorse on the younger girl's face—clear enough that even She could recognize it without the aid of Her facial recognition software.

"Give Mr. Wheatley my love, Sophie. And tell Miss Chell thank you for the haircut. And…thank _you_."

The little project's face was lit with a blue glow that She could only assume came from her eyes from the angle, and the elevator shuddered slightly. Rising swiftly, it cut off their final view of Sophie's distraught face as she pounded on the glass, still yelling and begging the younger girl to bring her back even as her voice faded from the hallway.

GLaDOS nearly felt compelled to say something, make some comment, some note about what had just happened, but the truth was they didn't _actually_ need the lunatic's spawn for what they had planned next. The little project picked Her up, her grip unusually tight around Her handles. She let go, rubbed her face with the back of her hand once again, and they went on.

* * *

They hadn't spoken the rest of the walk—er, flight—to the alternate chassis chamber. Though She felt She had more than adequate commentary about the surrounding lab areas through which they were traversing, the little project had been rather unreceptive. Silent and sullen, she'd put Her in a bit of a dour mood with her likeness to another willfully mute individual. GLaDOS didn't consider that kind of behavior worthy of Her commentary, so she remained silent for the majority of the trip. She only deigned to comment when it was absolutely necessary, such as when they'd passed by a series of cameras. Given the girl's past behavior, She felt it was necessary to remind her that breaking them would be a poor decision on her part and only a confirmation of her suspected sub-par intelligence.

At last they'd reached the door. It was still open from when She'd sent Blue and Orange to open it, but the room itself still remained beyond her actual influence apart from the speakers and cameras mounted inside. The alternate chassis, in hindsight, was a major liability, if the incident with the…the b-word was any indication; after all, it _was_ authorized with the same level of command that She Herself had and was connected directly into the system. Anyone in the room—robot or human—could easily dismantle Her control with a few taps on the keyboard. It would have to be a few _competent _taps, true, but the thought was still unnerving, nonetheless.

With the aid of the little project, they easily cleared the gap and hopped inside the circular chamber. GLaDOS easily spotted the keyboard, still disgustingly littered with feathers and a rotting bundle of sticks that might have been a nest once. _But where would a core port be?_

"**O-oh my. Would you be looking for this?**"

The horribly familiar voice—Her own if not for the stutters—echoed cheerily around the chamber. They whirled as one to find the enormous door already blocked by—

_"Oh my…"_ She trailed off in sheer disbelief, _"are you _serious_? Honestly Blue, I'm not surprised, but I seriously expected slightly better from you, Orange."_

"**I'm honestly impressed. There appears to be no upper limit for your stupidity. Even a ****_six-year-old_**** could have seen that this was a trap.**"

A portal appeared at the little project's feet, temporarily dropping her and GLaDOS's core in one motion as the girl lost her grip on Her handles.

_"Ahh!"_

"Hey!" The little project shot her arms out, as if for balance, and she floated in space halfway through the portal, temporarily besting the sneak attack. Seconds later, a metal claw gripped her around the waist, dragging her back in before she could resist.

"Don't—!" Her voice cut off as the portal fizzled from existence, cutting off Her view as she rolled on the floor.

Completely alone and defenseless.

"**Oh d-don't worry, ****_dear_****. I haven't forgotten about you.**"

Orange approached and picked Her up. She glared, and as much as Orange might have been under Caroline or whoever-she-was's authority, the slender robot had the decency to look slightly ashamed as it ducked its optic from under her hard gaze.

"**I don't think our little friend has g-gained enough…appreciation for the surface yet-yet, since she keeps coming back here. Perhaps we should f-fix that. Orange, be a d-dear, won't you?**"


	22. Chapter Twenty-One

AN: Hello all. I know this is a bit late, being on a saturday and all, but at least it's here. Really getting close to the end here, and I honestly can't wait. This has been a fun story to write. Thanks for the support so far, and I hope you enjoy. Please feel free to review/comment and let me know your thoughts. With that, read on!

* * *

Chapter Twenty-One

Chell knew something was wrong from the moment she opened her eyes. Perhaps even before then. It was something of a sixth sense that she had developed years and years ago. Honed by the search for scribbled messages tucked away in corners and the incessant, relentless pressure to perform perfectly, else you were, simply put, dead. Although in a place like Aperture, dead usually meant three or four times over for anyone else. To put it shortly, if the fall didn't get you, the leaking radiation, possibly poisonous gel, or asbestos would.

She shifted under the covers, peeling them back with the greatest possible care not to disturb Wheatley. With a fleeting look of rare tenderness before she turned away, she padded into the hall and closed the door. Ears keenly alert, she made her way softly down the stairs. A quick glance at the clock told her that it was still the wee hours of the morning; not quite early enough to be unholy, exactly, but early enough for her to be up and about in the kitchen.

On a normal day, that is.

Exhaustion tugged at her eyes, but she shoved the feeling down. With a heavy feeling in her chest and a numb sort of resolution, she resurrected the steel trap in her mind and shoved the exhaustion and worry into it and locked it shut. Trusting her gut had kept her alive and saved her life more times than she could count, but she had to be critical about this. She had to be thoughtful.

If that meant dusting off that steel box after all these years, then so be it.

Something was off, her gut knew that much, but other than complaining to her calculating mind about a general feeling of worry, it couldn't tell her why she was so apprehensive. So she told it to shut up until she could get a proper grasp on the situation at hand. If there was a situation.

Chell crept softly to her daughter's bedroom and gently prodded the wooden door. It swung open without resistance, revealing an empty bed with twisted, wrinkled sheets. Beside it lay an even emptier pallet, where Alex had been sleeping in case she needed something during the night.

A cold shiver ran down her spine, and she quickly ran to the kitchen, now heedless to the racket her pounding feet made. As she suspected, the dusty spot top of the fridge where they'd been keeping _Her_ core was desolate and empty. The cold feeling in the pit of her stomach solidified into an icy, dead weight.

She ran to the stairs to find Wheatley already making his way down, rubbing his eyes under his glasses.

"What's—"

"Sophie." He stilled, and she clarified. "She's gone. So is _She_. Alex too."

"Where did they…oh _g—_" Wheatley broke off and fumbled to the door to grab his coat, only to find it was gone. Sophie's was missing too, so Chell could only assume that Alex was wearing the other one.

"At least they're warm." Wheatley muttered as he ran to grab warmer clothing. Chell quickly knelt on the kitchen floor and unlocked a rather lonely cabinet close to the floor. Breathing deeply, she willed her shaking hands to still as she reached for the boots. Their crisp black-and-white lines were clearly visible, even in the shadowy interior of the cabinet, and she did her best to block out the memories as she pulled them out.

Her fingers remembered far too easily pulling the boots on, tucking her loose pajama pants in, pulling the black straps tight and secure around her calves. She stood unsteadily, wobbling back and forth a bit before muscle memory clicked back into place. Despite this, she found herself gripping the edge of the kitchen counter for support as her body shook.

Once upon a time, she'd had the mantra that her own survival was the only thing worth caring about between dodging turret fire and calculating puzzle solutions. Then Wheatley had unceremoniously crashed (quite literally) back into her life, turning her whole world on its head. A few years further down the line, she'd become a mother, shaking her world upside-down once again.

The old mantra had died years ago, replaced instead by a sense of responsibility for her own little family, her little paradise atop a hellish underworld. And now, once again, her mantra trembled and wobbled in the face of this wretched creature, this little girl Alex. Her age-old instincts—razor sharp and cold as ice—told her that Alex was beyond her own personal concern. She was just another unfortunate victim in a long list of many that Aperture had dragged asunder in their quest for the sake of science.

Perhaps it was fortunate that Alex had gone with Sophie and _Her_; at the very least, Chell didn't have to choose between following her instincts and indulging her more maternal side. The thought of being forced to decide made her sick, and she breathed deeply, trying to banish the unwelcome, warring thoughts.

"Chell, luv?" Wheatley was watching her, holding out her warm red sweater as he keenly watched her expression. She took the sweater with shaking hands and pulled it over her head, not daring to meet his gaze. She felt his warm presence at her back as he moved behind her, however, and she closed her eyes for the barest second, leaning against him.

No words passed between them, but she felt, somehow, that he understood.

"Let's go get 'em, yeah? And then ground Sophie, for sure. Definitely going to be a part of the agenda."

* * *

As it turned out, they didn't have to look far to find Sophie. Sometime during their hurried trot to the shed, they spotted a distant figure banging with futile fists against the metal door.

"Sophie!" Wheatley, with his long legs and sense of urgency, was the first to reach her. He took her by the arm. "What on _earth_ were you bloody thinking?" He yelled, all the while pulling Sophie into a tight hug.

"We," Sophie was crying, but they were rage-filled tears, "we—Abbi's in trouble, and—we went down to fix every—" she choked for a second, sliding an arm free from her dad's hug to wipe her face, "—but now Alex started acting all crazy and said it was all her fault, so she sent me back up and went by herself."

The mother in her ached to put arms around the both of them, so she did. But they also needed to figure out what to do. After a second, Chell pulled back and grasped Sophie's arm.

"Is there anything else we need to know? What exactly did she say?"

"I don't know! Something about it being all her fault, I suppose, because she thinks she woke Caroline or _whoever_ up—then she chucked me in an elevator!" Sophie's tears began to slow, but her voice grew thick with anger.

"I can't believe she just took _Her_ and—"

The metal door of the shed opened with a sharp bang, startling the three of them back a few feet. From the dark interior, just past the massive manual wheel crank, three particularly round optics gazed back with surprise, one blue, one orange, and one yellow.

It took less than a faction of a second for Chell to recognize GLaDOS's core and vice versa. Her yellow optic went wide, then narrowed, as if She had suddenly realized that for all her destructive tendencies, Chell was once again in a position where her hatred for Aperture equipment was perfectly suited for Her own purposes. Somehow, in that short silence, all of this passed between Chell and _Her_, and Her optic flicked upwards, as if to say, "do what you must."

The silence broke in a flurry of movement. Wheatley gave a mighty cry and tackled the orange-eyed robot, becoming a wild tangle of long limbs, flesh and metal alike. Chell joined him in the fray, focusing on the blue-eyed robot with a swift kick to the legs.

_"Ow! You dropped me!"_ Her indignant voice warbled as She was violently knocked from the stocky robot's arms and rolled wildly on the concrete stoop.

Chell paid no notice, instead laying into the stocky, blue-eyed robot with ruthlessly efficient blows. She'd learned from experience that these testing robots of Hers were weak at the joints, and so she doubled and redoubled her efforts there.

The blue-eyed robot was squealing with the most horrible, frantic modulation Chell had heard yet; it had abandoned hitting early on and was now vainly trying to block her punches. Sophie dove in, pinning the robot's right arm firmly down as Chell wrenched the portal gun out of the left.

Chell rocked back on her haunches—portal gun in hand—and the blue-eyed robot eagerly scuttled away. Getting to its feet awkwardly, it sprinted headlong into the metal door, the sound of vibrating metal filling the early morning air. It shook off the jolt and dove headfirst into the empty elevator shaft. Shortly after, the orange-eyed robot followed, sans an entire arm. Its sparking socket threw faint patches of light onto the metal door before it disappeared from sight.

After the sound of metal scraping against the elevator shaft had faded, only then did Chell catch her breath. Wheatley walked over, awkwardly cradling the other portal gun and the long robotic arm attatched to it.

_"Oh my g—you didn't have to damage Orange _that_ much you m—"_ She quickly cut off, as both Chell and Sophie sent Her respective murderous glares. _"Alright, alright, fine. Look, let's just get back down there. I've got a pretty good idea of what that _thing_ plans to do, but we'll need to take a two-pronged approach if this is going to work."_

Chell gritted her teeth, grinding them together unpleasantly. Anything to distract her from the fact that that voice was speaking, ordering, _commanding_ her once again. Unfortunately, from what little she knew, _She_ was the only one who had the most up-to-date information on the situation. If anyone was going to come up with a plan, it would, regrettably, have to be Her.

It still didn't change the fact that Chell far from trusted Her.

She seemed to sense this, turning Her cold yellow optic in Chell's direction.

_"Look. I know this all seems very suspicious, but you saw what that, that _thing_ did. She's taken over the cooperative testing initiative, and she has control of the facility that goes as far as this shed door, so she's managing to get around the system."_

"Why would she need to get around it?" Wheatley asked, still trying to shake off the robot arm from his portal gun with a rather uncomfortable expression.

_"Because, m—okay look, she's a virus, I am more than certain of that. As to why she calls herself Caroline, I have no idea and I couldn't care less."_

_"The point is that she's in control of the system, but the system doesn't recognize her as a _proper_ core."_ She dragged the word "core" out doubtless for Wheatley's discomfort, and Chell nearly smacked Her. _"The system is rejecting her."_

"But why Alex? Why would Caroline or whoever she is want her?" Sophie cut in quickly.

_"That little project has CEO-level admin clearance. God only knows why, but she has it. That little virus needs proper admin clearance to bypass the system and keep it from spitting her right back out."_

"So…now what?" Sophie asked.

"Now, you're going back home, young lady." Wheatley, finally having got the robot arm free, now used it to gesture vaguely in the direction of Eaden. "You shouldn't have been anywhere _near_ here, and you know that. Your mum and I will handle this."

"What?"

_"Actually, we need her."_ She sounded as if the words left a foul taste in Her metaphorical mouth. _"Your…_offspring_ will need to carry me to the alternate chassis room. Again. That way I can purge the virus from the system and fix this whole mess while you and the m—the other one go distract her."_

"Yes, yes exactly! I can do that. Please, mum, let me help." Chell glanced at Sophie's eyes and was forced to look away. She was using her father's patented puppy-eyed look on Chell, unfortunately, to great effect.

Still, Chell hesitated. Why did they have to go down, yet again, into that hellhole of a place? What was to say that Alex couldn't resolve the issue on her own, given her rather apt abilities? Why did this thing, this horror, this swelling fear in her throat, again fall to _her_? It went against the very grain of fairness, against justice that she was once again staring into the depths, knowing that she must descend.

But did she really, honestly, _truly _have to?

Wheatley seemed to sense her hesitation.

"You know, it's funny, when she found out about the whole, er, employee testing thing, you know what she told me?"

Chell shook her head.

"She said something, she said, 'You know they're pretty horrible, but even I wouldn't wish that on 'em.' Point is, she hated them, but she tried to see the good bits in everybody. If anybody deserves saving down there—besides you of course—it's that kid."

_"I would _strongly_ disagree with that statement. For multiple reasons."_

Chell almost smiled at that. She thought briefly of Alex's face creased in joy at the simple pleasure of running her fingers through her newly cut hair. And she'd thanked Chell. Willingly. Gratefully.

Meeting Wheatley's eyes, she nodded. They descended.


	23. Chapter Twenty-Two

AN: Hello all. I know I kinda dropped off for a week, but here's chapter 22 (technically 23). As a heads up, this story has a total of 25 chapters, so I'm getting close to the end here! Hope you enjoy and please feel free to comment/review and let me know your thoughts. With that, read on!

* * *

Chapter Twenty-Two

"**Right. Let's get down to business, shall w-we?**" Caroline chirped merrily, oblivious to Alex's shaking as she pressed up against the sides of her glass prison. Alex could hear the AI's voice—she could hardly ignore it, considering that there was a powerful speaker so-considerately placed inside the glass box just above her somewhere.

"**Lucky f-for you, you won't-tt-t be alone. I know, or rather, my tapes tell me, that you do so enjoy company.**"

"Who—?" Alex began, but the AI cut her off.

"**Why little Abbigail of course!**" She said it so cheerily, Alex felt sick.

She could feel the glass box moving, but as much as she wanted to smash the walls and soar to freedom, she didn't dare. Whoever "Abbigail" was, Alex could tell that she was terribly important to Sophie. Not to mention, she was a person, and Alex was leery of making any kind of bid for freedom just yet if it would put her at risk.

But…if they could escape _together_ maybe…

"**I can already see the gears turning in your head. Shame you can't see it too, since it's really very entertaining.**"

Alex scowled.

"**Nothing? R-really? I could have sworn that-t-t was the other test s-subject's shtick. Oh well.**" The barest edge of annoyance crept into Caroline's voice, and Alex flinched.

"**Not to worry, d-dear. You don't have to talk for what we're d-doing next.**"

Machinery whirred, and Alex could faintly feel the systems warming to some sharp and precise command. Without being plugged into the system itself or at least a console, she couldn't tell much beyond that. And she couldn't hope to control _any_ of it, not at least while Caroline had the systems in such an iron grip.

"**Here's what's g-gg-going to happen. You're going to plug into the system, bypass the security for me, and restore my access.**"

Alex wobbled a little as the box began to lower. She trembled, laying her forehead against the cool glass, trying to gather her thoughts. Reaching as far as she could, she felt the gentle, unobtrusive presence of another box, held by several multi-service claws. From what she could tell, it was very, _very_ high up above the approximate location of a large hole in the floor.

If she put a foot wrong, Abbigail would surely drop perfectly through the hole. Caroline seemed like the kind of person who would orchestrate such a thing.

Depending on how heavy the box was, Alex might be able to catch it. But that was assuming that Caroline would simply sit there and let her.

There was simply no way around it.

Alex thought and thought _hard_. Chasing into the strange nether region of her brain connected to the strange voices, she dove into it, desperately reaching for—

_ —what am I going to do? How can I possibly—_

Alex sucked in a breath and tried again.

_—why is she frowning like that? What on earth could she possibly be—_

_Hello_, Alex thought hard.

A high-pitched whine filled her ears, something not unlike a scream.

_Am I going crazy? What was _that?

_You're not crazy, but bear with me. I haven't done this before. _Alex tried to choose the most placating combination of words, but in the end, there simply wasn't time.

_I'm here with, er well, I was with Sophie. I'm here to help you, and I've got a plan._

_…what kind of plan?_ The mental voice took on a curious tone.

_The kind where you and me escape._ Alex could feel the glass cage hit the floor. _Get ready to drop. And don't panic._

"**Get out. And stand still while I plug you in.**"

Alex gingerly set one sock-footed toe on the floor, inching her way out of the glass box into the open space beyond. She hesitated for the barest second.

Then everything happened at once.

Alex grabbed for the multi-purpose claw retracting into the ceiling, and she drove it through Abbigail's glass cage. With a terrible, flanging shriek, Caroline screamed with rage. Glass crashed and tinkled to the floor.

"AHHH!" Abbigail yelled, and Alex reached for her. She barely managed to catch the other girl by the skin of her own theoretical teeth.

With a vicious mental shove, Alex wormed her way into control of the nearby panels and shoved them aside. Beyond, she could sense the vaguely square-shaped hole of an air duct.

"Go go go!" Alex yelled, grabbing whatever of Abbigail she could and shoving the girl towards the air duct. The stiff fabric of a jumpsuit slipped from Alex's fingers as Abbigail climbed inside the tunnel. Alex was _so_ close behind, she could feel the gentle breeze of air flowing from the duct—

Panels slammed into place, clicking into an airtight pattern with a series of horribly final _snicks_. Alex gulped in air, gasping, and skittered backwards.

"**Oh, what wrong? Didn't mommy ever tell you it's rude to leave before you've been excused?**"

Alex gasped and covered her head as another claw crashed into the panels just in front of her. The horrible sound of groaning metal and cracking panels filled her ears as the claw retracted.

She could sense Caroline getting ready to stab again. Alex shut her eyes tight and mustered what mental strength she could.

But the stroke never came.

"**Oh my. I wasn't expecting visitors, but then again, I'm flexible.**"

Alex could feel Caroline's attention shift, as she focused on—

_Oh no_.

Wheatley and Chell had entered the room with all their noisy thougts. Their minds twined together in a single purpose like bright threads: one curly and meandering and one straight and sharp as an speeding arrow. They were as familiar as Alex remembered from that day on the tower. As human and fragile as she remembered, too.

In less time than it took to blink, Alex felt the panels around them shift into a seamless cage.

"Look out!" Alex screamed, but it was no good because they heard her too late—

Alex threw out her hands, summoning every speck of mental strength as something large came crashing down above them. Mental force and two hundred pounds of pressure met in a sudden, dramatic spray of buzzing sparks and shattering metal.

She could hear Wheatley's yell of surprise before he called out, "Alex, are you alright?"

Caroline sighed, the sound warping into a computerized purr. "**You know what the truly tiresome thing about humans is?**"

Another large something—a panel of some kind—came crashing down. Alex barely managed to snag it and redirect the force. She was panting now, feeling her mind protest the strain.

"**You get ****_tired_**** so easily.**"

Alex was ready for the next panel, but her own weakness surprised her. This was more than a simple tiredness or a mere muscular burn of exertion. No, this was the stuff of those nightmares where she had to run from some monster, but her legs wouldn't obey and her body was just too _tired_—

"Alex! Just hang on, okay! We're coming to get you, just hang on—"

"**Did you see what I did there? Such a ****_tiresome_**** thing? I know it's repetitive of me to bring it up again, but none of you will be around long enough to truly appreciate something witty like that, so I thought I'd just point it out to save time.**"

Caroline's tone seemed to suggest a lady tittering at a tea party, rather than a corrupt AI in the midst of tormenting three people. Alex's head was spinning a little, and she sucked in a deep breath.

"**No? Nothing? Oh well. I suppose this is goodbye then. So goodbye.**"

Alex just barely caught the next panel, breathing hard. What before had been easy now felt impossible. She'd had barely any sleep, her stomach was grumbling at her, and now even her considerable willpower had deserted her.

_There is another way out…_

The traitorous voice whispered the thought and ducked before she could smack it from her mind. She could never, ever…

Alex cried out aloud, unable to hold the burning in. It hurt so badly, this exhaustion. She didn't dare give in, yet she couldn't muster the strength to make it stop. The panel was crushing, ever-pushing with the force of reinforced pistons towards her friends.

_But if it's the only way…_

The panel groaned warningly. Alex panted, stalling, but deep within her heart of hearts, her mind had been made up.

Struggling to keep the panel up, she felt for the control console. She found the familiar-feeling cord and fingered it with shaking hands.

Refusing to give herself any time to second-guess, she found the port on her neck and plugged the cord in.

* * *

Chell shook the scattered shards of metal from her hair and looked around. Wheatley was kneeling next to her on the floor of their makeshift cage, a protective hand hovering just over her shoulder.

"What," he adjusted his glasses, which had gone askew, "just happened?"

As if to answer his question, the panels around them suddenly descended to their regular places in the flooring. Finally able to see, they were quickly met with the sight of Alex slumped against a control console.

"Oh G—_Alex_!" Wheatley cried and ran to the small girl. Chell followed, a sinking feeling in her stomach. A small black cord, eerily familiar in construction, ran from the back of Alex's neck into the console. She was breathing, but shallowly, her eyes firmly shut.

"Alternate core accepted." The voice of the announcer, as obliviously chipper as ever, sounded throughout the chamber.

"**Excellent.**"

Chell nearly choked as a metal claw gripped her around the waist and hoisted her neatly into the air. Surprised, she managed to keep a grip on her portal gun, and Wheatley dropped his but somehow caught hold of it again.

"**You know, I'm not sure why you even bothered coming down here. Frankly, this project is defective,**" The AI gestured with a free claw towards Alex. Her golden optic was half-shut, almost bored now.

"**She was supposed to keep Her from murdering the whole facility, but obviously we know how that turned out. Not to mention, she murdered a dozen people on her own—oh, wait, did she not mention that part?**"

Half a dozen screens descended from the ceiling to Chell and Wheatley's height. Their blank surfaces flickered to life, depicting the familiar sight of GLaDOS's original central AI chamber. Chell swallowed, driving down the animalistic urge to claw like a madwoman to get away. It wouldn't do any good. Her own morbid curiosity drew her eyes to the screens.

"**I'll just clear that up for you real quick.**"

The static tableau suddenly came to life, as scientists and engineers walked across the chamber. A group of them were clustered at the epicenter of the whole scene, adjusting and tweaking various cords plugged into a control console. Then one moved, allowing Chell to see—

—Alex. Sitting mildly, almost apathetic, she didn't react as a scientist adjusted the dark, tiny little spots across her face. From the way he tugged, Chell guessed that the dark little spots were attatched to yet more cords. Their muted voices were dim and vague, too far away to hear properly.

After a few moments, the scientists stepped away, leaving Alex sitting alone on her chair.

"Hello, and welcome to the first annual Bring Your Daughter to Work Day here at Aperture Laboratories…" A voice, unfamiliar but energetic, boomed from the screen speakers. Chell nearly dropped her portal gun in shock. Of all the things, she'd never expected—

"—here at Aperture, we experiment with all kinds of technology, like the kind you'll be seeing today! We hope you enjoy this brief educational presentation."

"_Beginning software Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System_…"

She was seeing it. That awful, horrible, nightmarish day that she'd forgotten or perhaps never even known was happening right before her. And she knew what came next.

_"Software startup complete."_

In the footage, Alex's body tensed, gripping the arms of her chair. Chell could just make out the barest bluish tint to her face, reflected from her eyes, wide open and glowing.

_"If you'll take a look down here in the central chamber, you can see some of the first Artificial Intelligence technology hard at work. This is GLaDOS—say 'hi', GLaDOS!"_

Alex seemed to strain, and after a moment, a civil "hello" managed to escape Her verbal processors.

_"GLaDOS is in charge of running many of the labs' functions, like the energy turbines, the…"_ The announcer droned on, but Chell was no longer listening.

Neither, it seemed, was Alex. She had begun to speak, and the cameras barely picked up her fragile voice.

"No, I'm not going to talk to you, because I'm busy. Now please go away. I'm trying to concentrate." The invisible person she was talking to seemed to be quite chatty, since she continued,

"That's a lie!" She burst out quite suddenly. "I'm not listening to you—la la la la la—" she stopped.

"That's…that's not true. No they…they wouldn't." She was silent for a moment.

"But they did take my friend from me."

Something about her tone sent a chill down Chell's spine.

"They took him and didn't give him back. They took him without telling me." Her voice rose. "They took him without caring! They took him and he's gone and I can never visit…" Tears rolled down her face, and her head bowed in grief.

"What _have_ they ever done for me?" She asked, begged almost.

A klaxon wailed alarmingly and red lights began to flash. Alex stood from her chair.

"What have they ever done for me so I'd want to _help_ them, to _work_ for them? Why should they get _my_ help? I'm tired of helping! No one's ever helped _me_!"

_"Er, ladies and gentlemen, it seems we're having some…technical issues."_

Objects began to fly around the room, and Alex was floating with her long hair blooming around her head as if underwater. She turned, and Chell could see clearly now that her eyes glowed blue.

"Oh G—"

"Unplug her! Now, before she damages the mainframe!"

The footage shook, as the camera detatched from its place on the chamber walls and flew in a blurry arc. Somewhere along the way, something crimson splashed across the lens and tinted the world red. Then it crashed, and the video cut off with the harsh grating sound of static as snow filled the screen. Shortly after, it went black.

"**Well, the more you know…**" Caroline broke the silence and trailed off into a self-satisfied sort of hum. Chell was still too dazed to take much notice.

Alex had struck Chell as many things, but violent and vindictive hadn't been any of them. Yet here she was, by all accounts willfully seeking to harm her creators and turn against them.

No—that made it sound as if the scientists were innocent. Chell knew _that_ couldn't possibly be true. She knew firsthand that employees at Aperture were the kind who said "why not". They were the kind of people who sacrificed anything and everything in the name of science: safety, humanity, morals—the list could go on. She knew in the core of her being that they weren't good—in fact, far from it. Everything they created left pain and disaster in its wake as twisted legacy that had far outlived them.

Yet Alex had seemed to be the rare, miniscule exception to the rule. This bizarre, miraculous, polite little girl born several miles too far underground to be real.

Perhaps it'd been just another lie. A sweet slice of cake turned sour in the mouth, or the soft words of a turret split by gunfire. But one thing was clear; Alex might not have the inclination to be dangerous, but she had the ability to be.

"**…killed fifteen people at least. Of course, that's nothing to Her, or even ****_him_****.**" Caroline was nodding her optic lazily towards Wheatley, who bristled.

"**In fact, I—oh. Hang on I—j-just need t-to get some things-s-ss f-figured ouuuuuuuu-tt-t—" **

Caroline's face plate drooped, her optic going dark.

And Alex, who had slid to the floor, began to twitch, her eyes fluttering open.


	24. Chapter Twenty-Three

AN: Not much to say, since it's a bit late, but here it is. Please feel free to comment/review and let me know your thoughts, and I hope you enjoy. With that, read on!

Edit: Right, so after rereading this story, I realized that there was a pretty key detail of the story that wasn't made clear. Hope this edit clears that up. Toodles.

* * *

Chapter Twenty-Three

Alex drifted. She wasn't aware for how long or where. All she knew was that it was dark. And huge. And cold. Somewhere in that vast sea, she was adrift like a leaf on the waves, a paper-thin edge away from tipping into the depths and sinking. A single, tenuous cord pulled taut against the back of her neck, anchoring her in the void.

But no, it wasn't quite a void. It may have been without warmth or light, but Alex could feel—no _see_, she could _see_ little sparks and pinpricks of light all around her like stars. Stars were supposed to be very hot, she knew, and the pinpricks blazed so hot that it was like icy brands against her skin. But they didn't hurt—that was the curious thing; it was an odd sensation to have one's arm telling you that it was feeling heat enough to melt your nerve endings off without it actually happening. Still, it was unnerving, and Alex felt that the sooner she got out, the better.

But she had to find Caroline first.

Without warning, a red-hot blow knocked Alex in the shoulder, surprising her with how much it _hurt_. She'd been fooled into thinking because she was inside a computer meant that she couldn't feel pain, twice now. But she was a wiser girl than she'd been. She hoped.

"**Oh little project, surely you know better than to do something stupid. Oh wait, perhaps I'm giving you too much credit.**" Caroline appeared before her, a vision of ice and steel. Her eyes were the coldest Alex had ever seen, and she'd seen very few pairs in her lifetime.

"**After all, you plugged yourself in here.**" She gestured to the space around them, and though her tone was calm, her body looked wound up and ready to burst with the tension.

Alex flinched, and Caroline flew at her in a rage.

* * *

"So, do I want to know what happened?" Sophie, having built up the nerve over several minutes of walking, ventured the question. She almost regretted it when GLaDOS's golden optic turned on her sharply and narrowed.

_"No."_

"Okay then." Sophie backed off awkwardly. They walked in silence for several minutes.

The sheer vastness of the labs stretched all around them, brooding and silent. Whoever or whatever Caroline was, she didn't seem to be particularly interested in much of the labs. Of course, that could just be because she didn't have full access to the system yet.

But Alex was in the central AI chamber with her, according to what GLaDOS had said, so Sophie wasn't sure how much longer that would be true.

Sooner or later, they reached the alternate chassis chamber, and Sophie paused to check their surroundings.

_"Oh come on already. She won't be expecting us to try to make it to the chamber again. Besides, the people you unfortunately have for parents will provide a good distraction. _If_ they actually do their job."_

"You are really mean, you know that?" Sophie snapped, but she kept moving. Her feet clanged against the catwalks, which thankfully were nothing like the ones her mother had described down in the deepest reaches of the labs. Could that have only been a few days ago that she'd been telling Sophie about that? It'd already felt like a century since then.

They entered the chamber. It was dusty, and the ceiling tiles were stained several mysterious colors in the control room, but they found a core port control easily enough. Sophie met GLaDOS's golden gaze for the slightest moment, pausing, then raised Her high to plug her in.

"Caroline deleted." The voice boomed or tried to boom as best it could through the dusty speakers set in the corners of the room. Mostly all it did was rattle a few dust motes from above, which fluttered down like ancient snowflakes.

_"Oh G—what on earth could she be _doing_ up there?"_ GLaDOS's handles flexed with anxious energy. _"Surely she wouldn't—"_

"Alternate core accepted."

Sophie slowly met GLaDOS's single optic, and She stared back for a long second.

_"We _need _to get back to the central chamber. _Now._"_

* * *

Alex was panting hard. Caroline was floating some distance away, chuckling weakly. She struggled to right herself in space but failed. Chips and flakes of her were already drifting away, fading into nothing as she began to disappear from the system.

"**Pfft. You can't," she huffed, "you can't get rid of me, dearie. I'm a virus—I multiply. You'll find a hundred new heads for this one you've chopped off."**

"Not if you've got nothing to multiply with." Alex was still puffing, but she managed to pull herself up. She stood—er, floated—tall and faced Caroline.

"You'll be the last."

"**Ha! You can't—**" Caroline dissolved, her sentence unfinished.

"Caroline deleted." A new voice, tinted by painful memory, thundered around the void and made Alex jump.

"What on—"

"Alternate core accepted. Welcome user: ALEXANDRIA-ALPHA-ONE."

"Wha—AHH!" Alex felt herself heaved through the void of the mainframe and past hundreds of flashing sparks. She flew up, higher and higher until she landed with a jolt in a dark sort of room.

At her entrance, the room illuminated, showing a great many control panels and buttons and levers—all of them flashing and beeping away as the system seemed to refresh itself.

"Welcome to the Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System control center. Although this chamber may look real, please be aware that this entire room is a construction created by your brain or artificial intelligence, as the case may be. Because this is a construction, please feel free to engage in willful physical assault of the chamber's equipment in the event of emotional or mental distress, as this will not damage the equipment and likely only cause minor simulated pain."

Alex hesitated, then smacked the wall. She jerked her stinging hand away and scowled at the ceiling.

"Good. By physically hitting the equipment, you have now proven that you comprehend this message. In the event that you should experience unusually high emotional or mental distress, you may also…"

Alex stopped listening to the inane voice of the man above her. Her eyes—so new and childish in their perception—were instead drawn to the great rosy monitors lining the wall opposite her.

Memory clicked into place as she approached the crimson-tinted wall of screens—cameras. The unfamiliar pleasure of sight warmed her to her core; the gleam of light against smooth white turret casings, the shadowy patterns of plant overgrowth, and the clean, flawless lines of test chambers all grabbed for her attention. Each of them presented a visual facet that to Alex was jaw-droppingly gorgeous: sharp, smooth, stark, soft, dim, bright—Alex nearly gasped aloud.

Then the more negative emotion tied to sights came rushing back. Alex hunched over, struggling to breathe as crushing panic shrunk her throat to the size of a pin. Her hands shook. What had she _done_? She'd never been inside the system without another presence blocking her from complete connection. GLaDOS, for all her raw, bitter anger, had acted as a shield, protecting Alex from the overwhelming power of the mainframe.

Now Alex had no one, and the system felt like roots burrowing into her mind. The roots dug deep, threading the computer and the girl together as one. Alex knew, somehow, in her deepest instincts, that it would only get worse.

Movement on the monitors caught her attention, and Alex rose shakily. One of the crimson-tinted monitors showed two blurry figures caught in the grip of two multi-service claws. They wriggled, rather uselessly, and though one shot a glowing blast into the walls of the chamber and a bright oval appeared—a portal, the thought popped into her mind—it didn't do much good.

"It's—it's them!" Alex exclaimed to herself. She felt around the control panel purely out of instinct, slowly readjusting to the experience of simply _looking_ at things. With the system threading through her mind, she quickly put meaning to the strange symbols and colors before her. More than that, the system flooding her mind was like having x-ray vision, letting her know exactly what each button, switch, and lever did.

She found the multi-service claw controls. With bated breath, Alex gently set the two figures down on the floor of the chamber and instructed the single camera feed to fill the whole panel of screens. Chell and Wheatley jumped in size, suddenly clear, and Alex paused for the barest second, studying her giant friend's face. She could not discern any noticeable color beyond the rubyish haze of the camera lens, but that could be easily fixed. Just a wave of her hand and—

"Alex? Luv, are you alright?" His voice broke on the last word, and Alex frantically began waving arms he couldn't see.

"I'm here! I'm here! I'm fine, I'm right here!" Alex glanced around the room and felt her eyes drawn to a specific button. She smashed it with urgent hands. "I'm here! I'm fine!"

"Alex!" Wheatley nearly fell over, looking bewildered, and Alex giggled.

"Careful! I just put you down so you wouldn't fall—don't undo all my hard work!"

"Oh, don't worry now, I won't." Wheatley seemed to be shaking a bit, but he managed to steady himself. "Wouldn't want to undo your handiwork, now would I?"

"No," Alex agreed, then spotted another button. She pressed it, and this time Wheatley really did fall over, despite Chell's efforts to catch him. "How's that?"

"That's—that's amazing! Where are you?" He was staring at the monitor, and Alex vibrated with excitement. Success!

"Uh…the system, I think?" Alex glanced at Chell.

It was only a second-long glance. Barely much of a look even.

Memory clicked into place and Alex screamed.

* * *

Alex screamed, and Chell found herself lifted helplessly and suddenly by a robotic claw for the second time that day. Wheatley yelped and tried to use his considerable height to catch her, but their fingers missed by inches.

"Alex, what are you doing?" Wheatley yelled up at the monitor, but Alex's face had disappeared. Instead, Chell saw her own face staring back at her.

It was a younger version of her face, short a few scars but just as careworn and harried as she remembered, glimpsing through pockets of folded space. The viewer seemed to be from below as Chell hovered threateningly above, her arms extended as if holding something. GLaDOS's all-too familiar voice sounded from beyond the monitor's range of sight, but it was…different.

_"Are you picking up that Aperture Science we-don't-know-what-it-is? Just set it in the corner. It's a mystery I'll solve later, by myself. Because you'll be dead."_

Memory, bitter and sour, filled Chell's mind, and her mouth twisted in disgust. Much as she'd been crushed by despair waking up again down here—knowing somehow that the fight was far from over—she'd had a friendly voice shedding a ray of hope on the situation. She'd gotten a taste of "things-can-be-different" the minute Wheatley had popped his spherical self through the door, and she'd somehow found that maybe, just_ maybe_ things had a chance of changing.

This younger Chell had no such consolation, trapped in a lab with no one but a twisted sort of sentient being for company.

The video continued, marching onward with stubborn steps, obvious to her silent, fervent pleas to _stop_. Suddenly Chell saw her younger face bathed in a warm glow. _The emergency intelligence incinerator._ The camera seemed to fall, and her young face grew small and far away as the warm glow of red-gold light grew too strong to bear. The camera fell into the depths of the incinerator, entering a time and space unknown to Chell; though she remembered vividly throwing various cores into the incinerator, she'd never seen beyond the distant reddish haze.

Around the range of vision, indistinct shapes, red-hot and aflame, lay in indiscriminate heaps. She could hear the faint, piteous cries of a turret screaming, "it burns!". It quickly fell silent amidst the crackle of the flames. The camera lens cracked from the heat, running a jagged black line down the center of the monitor and startling Chell. Alex screamed again, but this time, it was barely recognizable—warping and flanging like an AI's would.

The screaming didn't stop, and the camera lens cracked again, plunging the video into black. Alex came back into view, pressed up against the walls of the small space she occupied, shaking and shivering.

"You," she seemed to reach for words, "you're the-t-the one who, who—" she clutched her head.

She raised her eyes, bright with sudden clarity. "You tried to kill me."

Everything suddenly clicked. Why Alex had piqued her memory, why she distrusted Chell despite never having met her. Why she was afraid.

This child had been Her conscience. Her slender source of morality. She had been the morality core.

Chell started as the claw dragged her higher into the air. She opened her mouth, desperately trying to speak, to make Alex understand that if Chell had known—if there'd been any other way—

But her throat was closed, shut tight hours ago. Her brain told her to speak, reminded her she _could_, but the all-too-familiar electric hum and the echoed vastness had awakened some animalistic instinct, buried years ago. _Don't speak_, it said, _making noise gets you caught. It gets you killed._

"No! No, no no no she didn't!" Wheatley quickly cut in and tried to grab Alex's attention, waving his arms wildly. "Alex, listen, she'd never, _ever_ do something like that to a kid—to you. It was—she couldn't—" he glanced at her, and Chell nodded encouragingly.

"—she never wanted to hurt anybody, but it was the only way! Alex, you've _got_ to get out of there. It's, it's _poison_, believe me. It makes you paranoid beyond believing."

Alex's face softened for the barest moment. Then the wheels started turning, aided no doubt by the massive computer she was hooked up to.

"Why exactly do you say that?" Alex's tone turned sharp. "_Why_ would you say that? Wait."

The monitor was flooded with thousands of flashing images, and Chell caught sight of more than one fleeting image of a relaxation center, occupied by unfamiliar but human faces. All at once, the images halted, and a familiar scene sprang to the monitor, burning itself into her brain just as it had the first time.

_"I AM NOT. A. MORON!" _The familiar voice, twisted with rage, thundered all around them, and Chell unconsciously flinched. Alex must have been horrified, seeing it for the first time. Still, much as she might have pitied Alex, Chell's protective side snapped and hissed at this treatment of Wheatley. No matter their mistakes, no matter their faults, Wheatley and Sophie were _her_ family, and _no one_ touched her family.

Chell quickly shot a portal underneath an ancient desk chair in the corner of the room. It was a one in a hundred shot, but her practice with Aaron's rifle all these years hadn't been for nothing. She heard the satisfactory _phish_ of a portal opening, and she followed it with another portal on the wall, just above where the claw was holding her captive. The chair fell through, just in time to fall through another waiting portal. With the combined momentum, the chair flew through the air and struck the claw, making Chell swing wildly in the air.

"Ah!" Alex cried out.

The claw released suddenly, and Chell fell to the floor, her boots catching her easily. Sprinting hard, she made her way over to Wheatley and grabbed some of his generous length of arm. He gripped her shoulder in return, stopping her.

"No! I can't—can't just leave her." Her grey eyes met his blue ones—so brightly colored in the fluorescent lights—and she saw something of her own rock-hard determination there.

But every instinct screamed at her to grab his arm again and flee.

"She can't see herself. And if you can't see yourself for what you are…you lose sight of what you've done. Or what you're doing." He gripped her shoulder, squeezing so tightly and with such urgency that she got the impression that he wasn't just talking about Alex anymore.

He'd been blinded once too. Blinded by the wild, irrational suspicion and bitter resentment that had brewed in that chassis for who knew how long.

_"—Huh? Can a moron do THIS?"_ Wheatley flinched, but she was holding tight.

"Al—" Wheatley's voice cracked, and he tried again. "Alex. _Alex._"

The video halted mid-tirade. Alex came back into view, sitting on the floor, crying.

"Alex—"

"Why were you yelling?" Alex asked, cutting him off. "How could you yell at anybody like that? I thought," she broke off, "I thought you were the best of them. Of all of them."

"Alex, look at me," Wheatley glanced at the camera in the corner of the room, "er, look at me as best you can."

Alex fell silent, watching tearfully. But she was listening.

"I am a bit of a monster. Truth is, I think everybody has a bit of a monster in 'em but—hold on, hold on! What's even truer is that this whole _thing_," he gestured to the chassis, "tends to bring out the worst bits of people. It makes 'em even more…monstrous."

"But she was, she wasn't," Alex began again, pointing at Chell.

"Wasn't in the system? I know. But well—well you remember growing up down here, right? You remember how grumpy everybody was, how mean they could be?"

Wheatley suddenly pushed her forward, eagerly getting into a characteristic ramble.

"Well, see Chell here, she never even had _one_ friend to talk to down here. Not one. Nobody to talk to except _Her_, and that doesn't even really count."

"No-nobody?" Alex seemed incredulous. "Nobody at all?"

"Nobody at all. And how, do you think, would that make you feel, to have nobody nice to talk to?"

"I'd feel awful."

"Awful enough to do things you might not have wanted to do, really?"

"But she still—" Alex started up, distressed again, "—she still hurt me. It still hurts."

"Well, that's what saying sorry's for, then, right?"

He couldn't possibly be—

"Chell, luv, _please_."

—serious. She shot him a look, too quickly for Alex to catch sight of.

She'd never apologized for anything she'd done down here. Not then, not now, not ever. She would never take back any of things she'd done in pursuit of her own survival. Nor would she apologize for this. In her own book, she'd done nothing short of what she'd had to do.

But Alex was still plugged in, and as long as she was connected, it would be impossible to completely rationalize with her. Even if Chell was in the right, _even _if Alex was wrong—this was about more than just an apology.

Alex _wanted_ to trust her, wanted to know that Chell really wasn't a monster.

But Chell had to say the words first.

So she mouthed it, _I'm sorry_. She put every shred of sincerity she could into her expression.

It wasn't enough. Alex's face fell, and though her head was turned downwards such that it was difficult to read her expression, Chell could see an anger growing on her young face.

She tried again. "A-a-a-unh." A few stuttered sounds escaped her throat, and Alex looked up, surprised.

"Ah-ah-_I'm_ s-sorry."

She'd said it. And something changed in Alex's eyes. Some strange cloudiness left them, as if perhaps the mainframe's poisonous touch had been lifted if only for a moment.

A pause.

"Thank you." Grateful and sincere.

"Alex?" Wheatley gently cut in. "I'm gonna have to unplug you now."

"No! Don't, don't—" Alex stumbled on the words, suddenly frantic, "I don't know what-what'll happen. I might be stuck. Forever!"

"No, no no no, see Alex, that's where you're wrong. Because I think you're clever enough to get unstuck. Strong enough too." Wheatley approached the control panel, where Alex's physical body lay motionless on the floor.

His hands shook as he gripped the cord.

"I believe you can do this."

Alex was gulping, panicking and scared. But she nodded, ever so slightly.

"If anything happens that…that's not supposed to happen, will you tell Sophie sorry for me? I really am sorry for shoving her in an elevator."

"I will. But you'll be able to tell her yourself."

"And Mr. Wheatley?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you. You know, for everything."

"You're gonna be fine, Alex, but…you're welcome."

Wheatley pulled the plug, and the monitor went dark.


	25. Chapter Twenty-Four

AN: Hello all. Wow, has this been a journey. As you may know from the story summary, chapter 24 is the last one. Thank you for such a warm welcome to the fandom and for support of this, my first fanfic. Special thanks to everyone who commented/reviewed, and a very, _very _special thank you to User724 for helping me with the story. I hope you enjoy this final chapter. With that, read on!

* * *

Chapter Twenty-Four

Alex awoke to a room hazy with light. The coldness in her limbs retreated as she began to take in the scene. An old-fashioned kitchen, painted with the rich golden hues of a fading sunset (how Alex knew _that_, she didn't know) lay before her. At the sink—a creamy, pleasing sort of white color, it was—a woman in a red dress with an apron tied round her waist stood, washing dishes and humming. The woman's rich, chocolatey hair caught the fading light like snatches of fire as it fell in gentle strands across the back of her neck.

It was a familiar tune, that song. Something about it seemed to pierce Alex's consciousness, poking momentary holes in the warm scene to reveal a cold, sterile beyond. As quick as they appeared, splashing Alex with cold pinpricks of reality—of numb icy feeling—they melted away in the face of the vision before her.

"Oh!" The woman turned, smiling in a way that said she was not very surprised and yet happy all the same, "You're just in time for cake."

It was Miss Caroline's voice—the _real_ one. Alex didn't know what she'd imagined the woman looking like, but she found all her expectations had been satisfied in the face that belonged to that voice.

The oven dinged. Alex turned her head at the sound, the simple connection between what she could hear and what she could see bringing her a rush of pleasure. Yet the feeling was dulled now, as if wrapped beneath layers of cotton fluff.

With delicate, dainty air, the woman tugged on a pair of oven mitts (was that what those were?) and pulled two grand-looking chocolate cakes from the oven. Even without frosting, they stood stiffly like soldiers, firm and solid in their construction despite their spongy texture. The woman set the cake tins down and reached for a blunt knife. With a methodical, patient air, she began freeing the cake from the tin.

She looked up. "Would you mind getting a glass or two? I think milk goes best with chocolate cake, don't you?"

"I-I wouldn't know." Alex tentatively walked into the kitchen. "I've never had them together." Her feet strangely didn't hurt. She lifted them and saw only smooth, healthy skin. No bandages, no scars.

Her heart began to thrum in her chest, and she breathed a little harder. The cold feeling returned, cutting deeply into her chest. She felt as if she were drowning again, and a muffled, far-away feeling of burning crept into her chest.

"Am-am I dead?"

Miss Caroline looked up, a wide, flat tool spread thick with frosting in her hand. With the quickest of glances, she made eye contact and returned to her task, her mouth curving in a gentle smile.

"Well, I wouldn't know, dear. I've never died."

* * *

Alex didn't have a pulse. Sophie knew, because she'd checked it right after her mother, unable to grasp the fact.

Alex was dead.

_"Look—"_ GLaDOS began.

"Shut up." Though it was not loud, or brash, Wheatley's voice carried the kind of quiet anger that was frightening beyond words. "Just…just shut up." His voice cracked a little on the words as he lifted Alex in his arms. Giant and child rose from the floor as a solemn unit, and one of Alex's hands flopped free.

At a loss for words, Sophie reached over and gently adjusted Alex's coat—Sophie's coat, far too big—and didn't speak. There was nothing to say.

And yet _She_ butted in and said something anyway.

_"Look I—the little project might still be in the system somewhere. If you plug me in, I can flush her out."_

"She's probably lying." Sophie pointed out when no one said anything.

_"Probably. But I also happen to have access to several hundred stasis tanks in working condition which happen to be…unoccupied."_

Wheatley didn't answer, and Sophie already knew her mother wouldn't open her mouth, that that left her to negotiate.

"Why would you help us?"

_"Believe me, I'd rather not. Unfortunately,"_ She dragged out the word, _"my protocol does not allow me to let Aperture Science assets be destroyed if that is not their purpose. A shame the engineers did not designate themselves with such a protocol."_

Sophie's mother glared at Her.

_"Don't look at me like that. Companion cubes have eventual destruction as their function. They are born and then they are discarded. Or euthanized, in some cases."_

"Should we—" Sophie began, but her mother had already taken Her core. She flashed Sophie the quickest and briefest of smiles. Like a secret, telling her that really, deep down, everything would be alright.

Her face set in a hard look, Chell carried GLaDOS over to the core port.

* * *

"Can I," Alex gulped, "can I go back?" She tried to keep the frantic nervousness she felt from her voice, but she failed miserably. She could firmly feel the cold burning now, muffled even as it was beneath the warmth of the scene. It was an illusion, she could see that now, quite literally. A happy simulation that felt too sweet to be real.

"If you like," Miss Caroline said amicably, beginning to frost the cake, "or you can stay, as you like."

"I want to go back. Now." The words hurled themselves from her throat, though her mind felt as if it were a thousand miles away. Somehow, she wasn't quite sure why she'd said that, since it was so warm, so nice here…she couldn't quite imagine leaving.

"Alright then." Miss Caroline replied, just as demure, just as unresisting as before. Perhaps there was a touch of sadness in her voice, a sincere regret that Alex couldn't stay for cake, but it was watery and quiet.

"But you'd better leave soon. You don't have much more time before—well, perhaps it's best not to think about it."

Alex nodded fervently. But a thought occurred to her; something that had been mulling in the underbelly of her mind popped to the surface and simply wouldn't sink back down. Much like a life jacket, she supposed, though she'd never really seen one.

"Miss Caroline? When I first—er, when I was _exploring_, I found something? A bunch of boxes, and they had labels…and one said, well—"

The flat tool clattered on the floor.

"—it said Caroline—"

"Alex." Miss Caroline said it with such urgency that Alex stopped. "Alex, I—"

She seemed to gather herself a little. She bit her lip, stopped, bit it again, then picked up the flat tool and placed in on the counter. Miss Caroline walked slowly over to Alex, as if moving through jelly. She knelt, bringing her face to Alex's level.

"Alex, I—I know what you're about to say."

"But I just wanted to—"

"I know." Miss Caroline cut her off, then winced, squeezing Alex's hand in apology. "I-I know what you were going to ask, but the answer is no."

"But why not? Why wouldn't you want to see the sky and the sun, and…and eat cake, _real_ cake?" Alex gestured to the cake cooling on the counter, half-frosted.

Miss Caroline looked down, not meeting Alex's eyes. "I can't go back, Alex. It…it's a different world out there. You're young—you can learn to make a place out there. So can your friends. But I…I can't do that. In another life, maybe. But not here and now."

"Well, you wouldn't have to do it alone. I could help you."

Miss Caroline shook her head, but she smiled. "I know you would. But I can't."

Alex searched the older woman's face. Her face was very smooth, Alex decided. It was a young face. But her eyes were very old, in a way Alex couldn't quite describe.

"I don't…I don't think that's the reason."

Miss Caroline laughed, but a tear escaped and dripped down her cheek.

"You're a sharp girl, aren't you? Well…you're right, but it's not a very good reason."

"That's okay." Alex hugged her, and Miss Caroline laughed again, squeezing Alex back.

"You know if I came back, I'd, well…I'd die."

"Someday." Alex pointed out.

"Well, yes, _someday_, but it would happen. And for someone like me, it would happen much sooner than later."

"But…but I'll die too, so why does that matter?"

"Well," Miss Caroline let out a long breath, "there's somebody that I'm not quite ready to see again."

"Who?"

"It's doesn't much matter who, but…I haven't forgiven them. They did some…some _awful_ things to me while we knew each other."

"Oh." Alex somehow couldn't picture it. Miss Caroline was the sweetest, gentlest person she knew apart from her friendly giant. Anyone able to get on her bad side like this had to be abrasive and cruel in the extreme.

"Do you think you ever will?"

"Will what?"

"Forgive them."

"Oh, Alex, I don't…" Miss Caroline trailed off, staring into space. "…I don't know."

Alex stepped back and neatly straightened the older woman's hair, smoothing it down with her fingers. Miss Caroline giggled at that, but it came out a bit funny sounding, as if it were wet.

"Well, at least you've got some extra time to do it."

"I suppose I do."

"I've got a lot of forgiveness to figure out myself."

"Oh," Miss Caroline shook her head, "I'm sure they'll forgive you. They know better than most the kind of circumstances you were under…"

"Oh, it's not just that." Alex wobbled from foot to foot. The burning had returned in full force, and the scene around her was growing just a tad bright around the edges. "I've got to forgive them too."

"Well then, I think you'll be in good company. They can show you how."

"I hope so."

The kitchen was turning white—a bright white that faded everything around it into a bright blur.

"Miss Caroline?"

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry you're not ready. And…thank you."

"Oh, for what?"

"Being kind."

Miss Caroline smiled, her eyes a bit puffy, and hugged Alex once last time.

"You're welcome, Alex. Now hurry. Go."

Everything went bright.

* * *

"Core removed. Please insert alternate core."

Chell paused, and the announcer continued to babble.

"Alternate core detected. Please insert alternate core."

_"Well, plug me in."_

"Does that mean—?" Sophie began, but was interrupted.

A choking gasp split the silence, and Alex coughed twice.

"Alex!" Wheatley cried. Chell hurriedly plugged Her in and rushed back towards Wheatley. Sophie joined her, laying a quick finger to Alex's neck.

"She's breathing! I mean her pulse's weak, but she's alive."

Chell hugged her daughter, proud beyond words at her cool-headedness.

"Core insertion complete."

_"Oh thank God that's over."_ Chell stiffened, wrapping her arms protectively around her little family.

Above them, Her optic loomed, bright and functional. And curious—examining them with a shrewd, calculating eye.

Chell never would have used the word 'tired' to describe the murderous AI, and yet she found herself lacking a better adjective. Her optic was bright but half-closed, simulating the expression of a sleepy human eyelid.

Or perhaps a tiger debating whether or not to devour a mouse.

_ "You know, an intelligent person would try to find some sort of _lesson_ in their horrible life experiences. Would you like to know what I've learned?"_

_ "It's that humans are rude little creatures that won't leave you peace, even when you forgive them for murdering you."_

Chell swallowed, and every muscled tensed in preparation—though for what, she wasn't sure.

_"So I've decided that all of you are banned from the laboratory premises, effective immediately. This has not been fun. Now get out."_

Chell could have wept, but she didn't. She could have even laughed, but she bundled the feeling into a box. Laughter didn't belong down here—at least not the light-hearted, genuine kind. It belonged to the above, with the blue sky and golden sun.

GLaDOS hustled them into an elevator, though it was crowded, and let it rise without comment. She pretended to examine the empty husk of Her own formerly occupied core, instead. Flicking it away like an empty peanut shell, GLaDOS tossed the core casing through a perfectly sized and angled opening in the panels of the chamber.

And when the elevator was all but gone from the chamber, She looked, making eye contact with Chell because She thought Chell wasn't looking. For a beat, AI and human stared at one another, unflinching, unblinking.

Then the elevator rose, whisking them all away.

* * *

As soon as they were outside, Chell burst out laughing, unable to contain the emotion any longer. She laughed so hard she had to sit, crying with mirth on the concrete stoop.

"Mom? Are you o—oh, oh—ok." Sophie broke off as her mother scooped her into a tight hug. Wheatley sat on the stoop next to them, propping Alex up with one considerably lengthy arm. The other he used to great advantage to wrap both Chell and Sophie in a group hug.

"Oh dear, you're leaking." Wheatley had never really dropped the eccentric habit of his many core-produced phrases. "Are you sure you're alright, luv?"

Chell sighed, but it was a happy sigh. "Yes. Just fine."

Over the snow-covered wheat field, the sun was rising. The promise of warmth after the cold night.

"Let's go home."


End file.
